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IMAGINATION    IN 
BUSINESS 


BY 


LORIN   F.   DELAND 


REVISED   AND    ENLARGED 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW   YORK  AND   LONDON 


13  J      J  J 

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THE  A.  R  MORRISOM 
MEMORIAL  LIBRARY 


(lopyrieht,  iqoQ,  bv  Hakpbr  <"v:   Prothrks. 

PRINTED   IN   THE    UNITED   STATES   OF   AMERICA 

I-N 


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IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 


THE  A.  P.  MOPrjISOM 

memok:!al  lid[-v.;<y 


IMAGINATION      IN 
BUSINESS 


WHEN  Napoleon  caused  the  names 
of  his  dead  soldiers  to  be  inscribed 
on  the  face  of  Pompey's  Pillar,  some  one 
criticized  the  act  as  "a  mere  bit  of 
imagination."  "That  is  true,"  replied 
Napoleon,  "but  imagination  rules  the 
world." 

The  subject  of  imagination  is  a  large 
one.  Even  our  morals  come,  in  part, 
from  the  imagination — as  the  virtue  of 
pity.  Doubtless  it  would  be  impossible 
for  a  human  being  absolutely  devoid  of 
imagination  to  feel  the  emotion  of  pity. 
But  let  us  consider  the  application  of 


429777 


IMAGINATION     IN    BUSINESS 

imagination  to  one  thing:  namely,  to 
'it^usiness.  It  would  be  easy  to  trace  the 
world's  inventions  to  its  imaginative 
men,  and  tell  interesting  stories  of  the 
gain  to  the  individual  from  a  single 
thought.  We  had  all  watched  children 
go  scuffling  along  to  school,  stubbing 
their  toes  at  every  step,  and  it  meant 
nothing  to  us.  But  one  day  an  imag- 
inative man  watched  them,  and  saw 
the  effect  of  putting  a  thin  strip  of 
copper  across  the  toe  of  the  boy's  boot. 
The  world  gave  him  a  million  dollars. 
It  could  afford  to,  out  of  the  many 
millions  it  saved.  Or,  leaving  inven- 
tions aside,  we  might  trace  the  imagina- 
tion which  made  the  waterfall  of  Niagara 
feed  the  electric  lamps  in  the  city  of 
Buffalo,  twenty  miles  away. 

But,  confining  our  thoughts  within 
an  even  smaller  circle,  let  us  follow  the 
workings  of  the  imagination  in  the  most 
material  form  of  business — that  of  or- 
dinary merchandising.  I  believe  that 
imagination  is   as   valuable — I   do  not 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

say  as  essential,  but  as  valuable — in  the 
management  of  trade  as  in  any  of  the 
arts.  It  is  as  valuable,  it  is  as  applic- 
able, and  with  the  single  exception  of 
the  art  of  literature,  it  is  as  essen- 
tial. 

But  just  what  do  w^e  mean  by  imagina- 
tion ?  If  our  research  is  to  be  carried  to 
any  distance,  the  word  should  be  clear- 
ly defined.  Is  not  the  best  definition,  to 
put  it  concisely,  this:  Imagination  is  the 
synthesis  of  the  mind;  that  is,  the  oppo- 
site of  analysis?  It  is  the  putting  to- 
gether of  things  into  a  compound,  not 
the  separation  of  a  compound  into  its 
parts.  It  is  the  relating  of  one  thought 
or  object  to  another  and  different  one; 
or,  rather,  the  relating  of  separate  ele- 
ments or  objects.  Its  nature  is  dual; 
it  manifests  itself  in  two  directions — 
range  and  intensity. 

Here  on  the  wall  hangs  a  sword  car- 
ried in  the  Civil  War.  Two  men  of  im- 
agination look  at  it.  One  of  them 
instantly    imagines    the    conditions    of 

3 


IMAGINATION     IN    BUSINESS 

society  which  brought  about  the  war; 
he  thinks  of  slavery,  of  the  horrors  of 
the  middle  passage,  of  the  scenes  of 
terror  in  the  Bight  of  Benin,  and  lo!  in  a 
twinkling  he  is  a  hundred  years  and 
three  thousand  miles  away  from  that 
sword.  That  is  range.  The  second  man 
looks  at  the  same  sword,  and  he  sees 
the  battle,  the  charge  at  the  fortifica- 
tions, and  the  fearful  slaughter.  He 
hears  the  bugles  blowing  the  advance, 
and  he  listens  to  the  deafening  roar  of 
the  cannon  and  the  higher-voiced  rattle 
of  musketry.  The  groans  of  the  wound- 
ed sound  in  his  ears.  Already  a  whole 
epic  is  acting  itself  out  upon  the  stage 
of  his  brain,  and  that  simple  sword 
is  its  beginning  and  its  end.  That  is 
intensity. 

Imagination,  then,  is  the  ability,  upon 
seeing  any  object,  to  construct  around 
that  object  its  probalole  or  possible 
environment ;  thus,  apprehending  any 
force,  to  realize  what  produced  it,  and 
what  it  will  produce.     The  man  of  imag- 

4 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

ination  writes  a  drama.  His  dramatic 
instinct  apprehends  the  power  of  con- 
trasts; he  constructs  a  plot;  he  realizes 
what  each  person  will  do,  and  why  he 
will  do  it.  His  characters  take  posses- 
sion of  his  will;  they  act  out  their  own 
destiny — often  against  their  author's 
own  desire.  He  relates  it  all  together. 
Take  the  simplest  instance  of  this  re- 
lating of  one  thing  to  another  in  busi- 
ness. Let  me  say  here,  in  passing,  that  I 
shall  not  introduce  into  the  considera- 
tion of  our  subject  any  supposititious  oc- 
currences or  any  imaginary  happenings. 
You  would  have  the  right,  very  proper- 
ly, to  challenge  such  illustrations,  and  I 
should  be  proving  my  point  much  in 
the  same  manner  in  which  our  friends, 
the  Baconians,  establish  the  author- 
ship of  the  great  plays.  So  let  it  be 
clearly  understood  that  each  illustra- 
tion is  an  actual  fact,  either  in  my 
experience,  or  of  which  I  have  been 
cognizant.  And  one  other  point:  it  is 
difhcult  at  times  to  draw  the  line  be- 

5 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

tween  imagination  and  sagacity.  Start- 
ing in  sagacity,  a  man's  action  often 
proceeds  by  imagination.  The  two  be- 
come blended.  Perhaps  it  is  not  too 
much  to  claim  that,  as  sagacity  emerges 
from  the  present,  the  existing,  and  the 
seen,  into  the  future,  the  unborn,  and 
the  unapprehended,  it  becomes  im- 
agination. I  shall  try  to  confine  myself 
to  instances  of  action  which  proceed 
forth  from  imagination. 

We  were  about  to  consider  the  sim- 
plest illustration  of  this  relating  of  one 
thing  to  another  in  business.  Let  me 
tell  the  story  of  two  bootblacks.  We 
can  scarcely  go  lower  in  the  business 
scale.  These  two  boys,  of  about  the 
same  age,  I  found  standing,  one  Satur- 
day afternoon,  on  opposite  sides  of  a 
crowded  thoroughfare  in  Springfield. 
So  far  as  could  be  judged,  there  was  no 
preference  between  the  difTcrent  sides 
of  the  street,  for  an  equally  large  crowd 
seemed  to  be  moving  on  both  sides. 
The  bootblacks  had  no  regular  stand, 

6 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

but  each  had  his  box  slung  over  his 
shoulder,  and,  standing  on  the  curb- 
stone, solicited  the  passers-by  to  stop 
and  have  a  shine.  Each  boy  had  one 
"call,"  or  method  of  solicitation,  which 
he  repeated  at  regular  intervals.  The 
two  solicitations  were  entirely  different, 
but  each  was  composed  of  four  words. 
They  never  varied  them.  Yet  one  of 
these  boys,  by  the  peculiar  wording  of 
his  solicitation,  secured  twice  as  much 
business  as  the  other,  so  far  as  one  could 
judge,  and  I  watched  them  for  a  long 
time. 

The  cry  of  the  first  boy  was,  "Shine 
your  boots  here."  It  announced  the 
simple  fact  that  he  was  prepared  to 
shine  their  boots.  The  cry  of  the  sec- 
ond boy  was,  "Get  your  Sunday  shine!" 
It  was  then  Saturday  afternoon,  and 
the  hour  was  four  o'clock.  This  sec- 
ond boy  employed  imagination.  He  re- 
lated one  attraction  to  another ;  he  joined 
facts  together ;  his  four  simple  words  • 
told  all  that  the  first  boy  said,  and  a 

7 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

great  deal  more.  It  conveyed  the  in- 
formation, not  simply  that  he  was 
there  to  sliine  shoes,  but  that  to-morrow 
was  Sunday;  that  from  present  ap- 
pearances it  was  likely  to  be  a  pleasant 
day;  that  he,  as  a  bootblack,  realized 
they  would  need  an  extra  good  shine; 
and,  somehow,  the  sentence  had  in  it  a 
gentle  reminder  that  the  person  on 
whose  ears  it  fell  had  heretofore  over- 
looked the  fact  that  the  next  day  was  the 
Sabbath,  and  that  any  self-respecting 
Christian  would  wish  his  shoes  shined 
before  he  repaired  to  the  sanctuary. 
Perhaps  it  was  merely  good  luck  that 
this  boy  secured  twice  the  business  of 
the  other,  but  I  have  seen  too  many 
of  such  experiences  to  think  of  them  as 
accidental. 

Take  another  case,  not  in  my  own  ex- 
perience, but  which  happened  to  Heine- 
mann,  the  European  publisher.  He 
once  noticed  two  peddlers  standing  side 
by  side,  selling  toy  dolls.  One  of  them 
had  a  queer,  fat-faced  doll,  which  he  was 

8 


IMAGINATION     IN    BUSINESS 

pushing  into  the  faces  of  the  passers-by, 
giving  it  the  name  of  a  well-known 
woman  reformer,  then  prominently  be- 
fore the  pubHc.  His  dolls  were  selling 
rapidly,  while  the  man  beside  him,  who 
had  a  really  more  attractive  doll,  was 
doing  comparatively  little  business.  A 
thought  occurred  to  Heinemann,  and  he 
tried  an  experiment.  Calling  the  second 
peddler  to  one  side,  "My  friend,"  he 
said,  "do  you  want  to  know  how  to  sell 
twice  as  many  of  these  dolls  as  you  are 
selling  now?  Hold  them  up  in  pairs, 
two  together  in  each  hand,  and  cry  them 
as  'The  Heavenly  Twins.'"  The  toy- 
vendor  somewhat  grudgingly  followed 
his  advice.  It  was  at  a  time  when 
Sarah  Grand's  famous  novel  was  at  the 
height  of  its  popularity,  and  the  title 
of  the  book  was  on  every  one's  tongue. 
Perhaps  it  was  merely  another  case  of 
good  luck,  but  the  Heavenly  Twins 
dolls  were  an  instantaneous  success,  and 
within  one  hour  the  vender  of  the  woman- 
reformer  dolls  gave  up  the  fight,  acknowl- 

9 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

edged  himself  beaten,  and  moved  five 
blocks  down  the  street  to  escape  the 
ruinous  competition.  Here,  again,  is 
the  relating  of  one  thing  to  another, 
though  in  this  case  it  was  the  relating 
of  a  popular  name  to  an  absolutely 
foreign  subject.  Of  course,  the  rela- 
tion was  wholly  illogical;  but  it  "got 
there"  just  the  same. 


II 


THE  imaginative  man  sends  his 
thought  through  all  the  instincts, 
passions,  and  prejudices  of  men;  he 
knows  their  desires  and  their  regrets; 
he  knows  every  human  weakness  and 
its  sure  decoy.  Let  me  illustrate  next 
that  use  of  the  imagination  in  business 
which  is  cleverly  built  on  the  frailties 
of  mankind.  It  may  be  instanced  in 
as  many  ways  as  there  are  human  weak- 
nesses. Under  this  head  comes  the 
subscription  book,  offered  to  you  in  a 
delicately-worded  circular,  explaining 
that  an  edition  of  two  hundred  copies 
only  is  to  be  printed,  and  the  plates  then 
destroyed,  thereby  insuring  the  rarity 
of  the  book.  If  we  stop  and  think  a 
moment,   we  recognize   that  here  is  a 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

direct  appeal  to  vanity  and  selfishness. 
Yet  how  it  works!  Men  are  gratified 
even  to  be  included  in  the  list  of  re- 
cipients of  such  an  invitation.  And 
yet,  really,  the  invitation  is  tantamount 
to  an  insult,  for  it  assumes  your  over- 
mastering vanity  and  selfishness  by 
making  its  strongest  appeal  in  this 
direction. 

Another  weakness  in  human  nature 
is  the  inability  to  throw  away  an  ele- 
ment of  value,  even  though  it  cannot  be 
utilized.  Many  years  ago  one  of  the 
large  retailers  of  Oriental  rugs  in  this 
country,  the  representative  of  leading 
houses  in  Smyrna  and  Constantinople, 
found  themselves  overloaded  with  goods. 
The  situation  was  critical  unless  a  cer- 
tain part  of  their  stock  could  be  turned 
over  at  once.  The  firm  had  but  one  prop- 
osition to  make:  namely,  a  great  sac- 
rifice sale  of  its  smaller  sizes  of  rugs, 
with  a  reduction  in  price,  of  from  fifty 
to  sixty  per  cent,  to  insure  the  move- 
ment of  at  least  a  thousand  rugs,  at 

12 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

retail,  within  one  week.  An  average 
price  on  small  Oriental  rugs — take  them 
as  they  come — would  be  thirty  to  thirty- 
five  dollars.  This  called  for  an  average 
loss  of  profit  on  each  rug  of  from  fifteen 
to  twenty  dollars.  But  just  here  imag- 
ination was  applied,  and  another  course 
was  recommended  and  adopted,  which 
was  based  upon  the  inability  of  the 
average  person  voluntarily  to  throw 
away  an  element  of  value.  This  was 
twenty  years  ago,  and  the  plan  has  since 
lost  much  through  familiarity;  but  in 
those  days  it  was  a  novelty,  and  it 
worked  most  effectively. 

Briefly,  it  purposed — not  to  sell  rugs, 
oh,  dear,  no! — but  to  determine  the  rel- 
ative advertising  merits  of  the  different 
newspapers  of  the  city  in  which  this 
house  was  located.  A  test  was  to  be 
made  for  six  days.  Of  course,  the  firm 
was  willing  to  pay  something  for  such 
information,  and  so  in  each  paper  there 
was  printed  a  facsimile  of  a  one-dollar 
bill,  made  out  in  the  name  of  the  firm, 

13 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

and  good  during  the  next  six  days,  to 
the  extent  of  one  dollar,  on  the  purchase 
of  any  Oriental  rug  at  their  establish- 
ment. The  imitation  one-dollar  note 
was  somewhat  crude,  but  in  size  and 
general  appearance  it  suggested  a  dollar 
bill,  and  results  showed  that  it  was 
difficult  for  many  persons  to  regard  it 
in  any  other  light.  At  least,  they 
found  it  as  hard  to  let  it  go  unused  as  if 
it  had  been  indeed  a  genuine  dollar.  To 
all  intents  and  purposes  it  was  a  one- 
dollar  bill,  provided  it  was  spent  at  a 
certain  store  during  a  certain  limit  of 
time  and  for  a  certain  article.  It  seems 
incredible  now,  for  the  experiment  was 
not  tried  in  a  large  city,  yet  within  three 
days  the  volume  of  rugs  sold  amounted 
to  the  largest  total  yearly  discount  limit ; 
in  other  words,  the  greatest  discount 
given  to  any  retail  house  if  the  volume 
of  its  sales  in  one  year  could  be  made  to 
equal  this  total. 

The  anticipation  of  one  thousand  rugs 
was  far  exceeded  in  the  performance, 

14 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

and  the  week  ended  with  sales  of  sixteen 
hundred  rugs.  On  these  there  had  been 
a  total  discount  of  sixteen  hundred 
dollars,  with  but  little  more  than  the 
customary  daily  amount  of  advertising, 
and  a  complete  saving  of  the  large  sacri- 
fice which  had  at  first  seemed  to  the 
firm  to  be  inevitable.  The  experiment 
was  a  bold  one,  for  had  it  failed  the 
firm  must  have  suffered  ten  days'  delay 
at  a  time  of  pressing  necessity,  I  had 
faith  in  the  plan,  however,  because  it 
was  founded  on  a  principle  in  human 
nature — the  inability  to  throw  away 
an  element  of  value, 

Mark  this  fact !  It  was  not  the  price. 
It  never  is.  It  was  the  reason  for  the 
price.  If,  instead  of  giving  the  buyer 
one  dollar  toward  his  purchase  money, 
they  had  taken  twelve  dollars  off  the 
rug,  there  might  have  been  sold,  per- 
haps, two  hundred  of  those  rugs — 
scarcely  more!  But  by  making  one- 
twelfth  as  good  an  offer  in  a  more 
imaginative  form,  they  sold — not  two 

15 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

hundred    rugs,    but    sixteen    hundred. 
That  is  imagination  in  business! 

When  the  late  Phillips  Brooks  held  a 
series  of  religious  services  on  Sunday 
evenings  in  Faneuil  Hall,  Boston,  some 
doubt  was  expressed  as  to  the  size  of 
the  audience,  since  it  was  plainly  an- 
nounced that  these  services  were  for  the 
"waifs"  and  "strays"  of  the  city,  and 
not  for  church-goers.  The  club  of  young 
men  who  had  the  matter  in  hand  left  to 
me  the  question  of  deciding  what  course 
would  insure  the  largest  possible  at- 
tendance. I  went  the  first  night,  and 
found  the  hall  well  filled.  The  second 
night  the  attendance  had  dwindled 
perceptibly,  and  the  third  Sunday  night 
there  was  scarcely  more  than  half  an 
audience.  I  called  the  committee  to- 
gether, and  told  them  that  the  audience 
had  grown  so  small  that  we  must  here- 
after have  admission  wholly  by  ticket. 
I  still  remember  their  consternation  at 
this  proposal.  Their  argument  was  a 
very  natural   one:  if  you   cannot  get 

i6 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

people  to  come  now,  when  there  is  no 
barrier  whatever  to  their  coming,  how 
do  you  expect  to  get  them  to  come  when 
you  refuse  to  admit  them  unless  they 
have  a  ticket  ?  But  we  carried  the  plan 
through,  and  thereafter  no  one  was 
admitted  who  did  not  have  a  ticket. 
From  that  night  the  hall  was  full  at  every 
service.  I  made  the  ticket  so  that  it 
resembled  in  appearance  a  season  ticket 
to  the  most  expensive  course  of  lectures 
or  entertainments.  As  might  have  been 
expected,  the  people  who  got  these 
tickets  found  it  quite  impossible  to 
sacrifice  an  element  of  value,  however 
slight  that  value  was.  They  were  en- 
titled to  attend  divine  service  that  night 
at  Faneuil  Hall,  while  Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry,  their  neighbors,  were  not.  And 
this  slight  advantage  many  of  them 
could  not  relinquish. 

Mr.  Moody,  the  evangelist,  found  it 
necessary  to  employ  this  same  method 
when  he  held  services  in  the  great  taber- 
nacle in  Boston  many  years  ago.     His 

17 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

attendance,  large  at  first,  soon  fell  off 
materially;  but  Mr.  Moody,  to  correct 
this,  announced  that  attendance  would 
be  by  ticket  only;  within  a  week  the 
great  tabernacle  was  crowded  at  every 
service,  and  this  continued  up  to  the 
last  meeting. 

Perhaps  we  might  leave  the  domain  of 
business  for  one  moment,  and  remind 
ourselves  of  the  working  of  this  law  in 
the  privacy  of  our  own  homes,  when 
one's  wife  says,  "My  dear,  there  are  only 
a  few  more  of  these  strawberries  left; 
they  can't  keep  till  to-morrow;  I  wish 
you'd  eat  them  up  to-night  so  they 
won't  spoil!"  There  again  is  the  ele- 
ment of  value  which  so  rarely  can  be 
thrown  away  gracefully. 

But  returning  to  business,  let  me 
relate  another  experience  along  the 
same  line.  It  happened  back  in  the 
eighties,  but  human  nature  has  not 
changed  in  the  intervening  quarter 
of    a  century    A  leading  organ   man- 

i8 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

ufactory  found  that  by  actual  count 
they  had,  in  the  preceding  fifty  years, 
manufactured  and  sold  a  larger  num- 
ber of  organs  than  any  other  maker  in 
the  world.  In  other  words,  they  held 
the  world's  record  of  sales,  the  num- 
ber being  two  hundred  thousand.  The 
problem  was  to  determine  hov/  best  to 
utilize  the  advantage  contained  in  this 
fact.  I  suggested  that  they  offer  a 
prize  for  the  best  popular  conception  of 
the  number  two  hundred  thousand ;  that 
they  publish  this  offer  widely  through- 
out the  country,  which,  in  itself,  would 
call  attention  in  an  interesting  way  to 
the  fact  that  they  had  manufactured 
two  hundred  thousand  organs.  They 
were  then  to  take  the  fifty  best  con- 
ceptions of  this  large  total,  making  an 
engraving  to  illustrate  each  one,  and 
publish  the  whole  in  an  attractive  pam- 
phlet, of  which  they  should  issue  an 
edition  large  enough  to  make  the  cost  of 
the  book  not  to  exceed  one  cent.  It 
could  be  mailed  for  another  cent,  so  that 

19 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

they  could  supply  them  to  the  public 
at  a  cost  of  two  cents ;  or,  in  other  words, 
any  one  enclosing  a  two-cent  stamp  in  a 
letter  would  receive  the  book  by  mail; 
and  if  a  large  number  of  these  books 
could  be  distributed,  it  would  be  sub- 
stantially free  advertising,  for  it  would 
be  advertising  which  involved  no  ex- 
penditure beyond  the  labor  of  mail- 
ing the  books.  It  was  found  that  an 
edition  of  one  hundred  thousand  copies 
would  have  to  be  printed  to  bring  the 
cost  to  this  low  limit,  and  the  firm 
questioned  whether  so  many  as  this 
could  be  disposed  of  by  a  simple  offer 
that  the  book  would  be  sent  on  receipt 
of  a  two-cent  stamp.  Without  giving 
the  subject  very  much  thought,  I  ad- 
vised that  it  was  perfectly  safe,  and  the 
company  accordingly  went  ahead  and 
prepared  the  book. 

Four  months  later,  m  discussing  an- 
other matter,  they  referred  to  the  failure 
of  their  cfTorts  to  dispose  of  the  book, 
and  their  chagrin  at  finding  so  large  an 

20 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

edition  on  their  hands  which  they  could 
not  use.  It  appeared,  on  further  con- 
versation, that  to  dispose  of  them  they 
had  advertised  them  once  in  the  Youth's 
Companion,  a  paper  which  at  that  time 
had  a  circulation  of  over  four  hundred 
thousand  copies.  They  showed  me  the 
advertisement.  It  measured  about  six 
inches,  single  column,  and,  in  good  plain 
type,  announced  that  a  book  entitled 
"How  Large  is  200,000?"  had  been  pre- 
pared, with  over  fifty  illustrations,  finely 
printed,  making  an  attractive  volume 
of  forty-eight  pages,  which  would  be 
sent  free  on  receipt  of  a  two-cent  stamp. 
In  all  the  time  which  had  elapsed  since 
that  advertisement  had  appeared  they 
had  received  788  replies,  and,  conse- 
quently, an  edition  of  99,212  books  was 
still  upon  their  hands.  The  man  who 
was  responsible  for  this  operation  felt 
his  humiliation,  but  nevertheless  he  be- 
lieved that  he  could  get  rid  of  those 
books,  by  an  advertisement  in  the 
same  paper,  inserted  once  only,  and  in  a 

21 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

smaller  space — virtually  a  mere  repeti- 
tion of  the  previous  offer. 

Accordingly,  the  following  advertise- 
ment appeared:  At  the  top  were  the 
words,  PRIZE  REBUS.  Under  this  head- 
ing there  was  a  simple  rebus,  one  of 
the  old-fashioned  kind  once  dear  to  the 
"regular  subscriber,"  although  this  par- 
ticular puzzle  was  so  easy  of  solution 
that  any  person  of  ordinary  intelligence 
could  not  fail  to  work  it  out  in  a  rea- 
sonable ^time.  Under  the  rebus  was  the 
offer,  which  was  to  the  effect  that  the 
books  had  been  prepared,  that  a  certain 
edition  had  been  printed,  that  no  more 
would  be  thereafter  printed,  and  that 
the  books  would  not  be  distributed  any 
longer  upon  request,  but  would  be  given 
as  prizes  to  any  one  who  could  solve  the 
rebus  there  given.  Of  course  the  rebus, 
being  exceedingly  simple,  would  be 
solved  readily;  it  then  entitled  its  in- 
terpreter to  a  book,  and  we  find  our- 
selves at  once  back  on  the  old  ground 
of  a  person  entitled  to  an  advantage, 

22 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

and  called  upon  to  choose  whether  he 
will  avail  himself  of  that  advantage  by 
a  very  slight  expenditure,  or  sacrifice 
the  advantage  with  no  expenditure. 
The  advertisement  was  inserted  once, 
and  I  heard  nothing  further  from  the 
organ  company  for  a  time.  Then  came 
a  letter  saying,  "Where  is  this  thing 
going  to  end  ?  We  have  sent  out  twen- 
ty-three thousand  books  on  that  one 
advertisement  up  to  last  Saturday  night. 
We  have  now  a  force  of  five  women  em- 
ployed in  opening  letters  and  mailing 
books.  Had  we  not  better  prepare  an- 
other edition?" 

So  it  went  on  for  ten  weeks  more, 
finally  breaking  all  known  records  for 
the  number  of  replies  from  any  single 
advertisement. 

Now,  what  was  the  defect  in  the  first 
offer  ?  It  employed  no  imagination.  It 
did  not  reckon  with  human  nature ;  or, 
rather,  it  went  directly  contrary  to  a  law 
of  human  nature.  There  is  a  belief, 
deep-seated  in  the  human  mind,  that 

23 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

the  thing  which  you  can  get  for  nothing 
is  worth  nothing.  The  public  very 
properly  accepted  this  book  at  its  pub- 
lisher's own  appraisal;  he  offered  it  for 
nothing,  therefore  it  was  worth  nothing. 
It  would  be  possible  for  me  to  go  further, 
and  tell  you  how  the  advantage  was 
followed  up  in  this  case,  and  organs 
were  sold  to  the  people  who  had  solved 
the  prize  rebus,  but  that  is  what 
Kipling  calls  "another  story,"  and  does 
not  properly  belong  under  this  par- 
ticular weakness  of  human  nature. 

I  want  to  give  just  one  more  illustra- 
tion along  this  line.  A  leading  pub- 
lisher conceived  the  idea  of  preparing  a 
series  of  pictures  of  the  great  battles  of 
the  Civil  War.  There  were  many  sub- 
jects in  the  series,  and  they  were  finely 
executed  from  originals  by  famous  ar- 
tists. With  no  pains  or  expense  spared, 
and  sure  of  success,  a  very  large  edition 
was  printed.  They  were  offered  to  the 
public  at  five  dollars  each.  It  was  never 
intended  to  reduce  this  price,  except  to 

24 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

quote  a  slightly  lower  rate  for  the  com- 
plete series.  But  the  pictures  were  a 
dead  failure.  When  I  examined  into 
this  particular  venture  the  account  on 
the  books  of  the  firm  stood  charged  with 
an  expenditure  of  over  fifty  thousand 
dollars,  against  which  there  were  re- 
ceipts amounting  to  seven  hundred 
dollars,  representing  the  sales  of  the 
first  six  months.  Net  loss  up  to  that 
date :  forty -nine  thousand,  three  hundred 
dollars.  It  was  evident  that  this  was 
a  bad  investment.  The  question  was 
whether  it  would  not  be  wise,  in  view 
of  the  signal  failure  of  the  enterprise, 
to  reduce  the  pictures  to  a  price  of  one 
dollar,  which  would  represent  less  than 
the  actual  manufacturing  cost,  it  is  true, 
but  which  would  go  far,  if  the  entire 
edition  of  fifty  thousand  could  be  sold, 
to  reimburse  the  company  for  the  very 
large  sum  which  had  been  put  into  these 
pictures,  and  which,  at  present,  there 
seemed  to  be  no  way  of  taking  out. 
The  plan  was  not  to  spend  any  money 

25 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

in  advertising,  but  to  announce  to  the 
trade,  and  to  storekeepers  generally, 
that  these  five-dollar  pictures  were  now- 
reduced  to  one  dollar. 

If  the  plan  had  been  carried  out  along 
the  lines  then  proposed,  the  result  must 
have  been  an  absolute  failure.  It  is 
doubtful  if  a  thousand  more  pictures 
would  have  been  sold.  Instead,  the 
following  plan  was  suggested,  and  its 
efficacy  may  be  left  to  the  judgment  of 
any  student  of  human  nature,  A  cir- 
cular was  to  be  prepared  and  mailed  to 
every  member  of  the  Grand  Army  of  the 
Republic,  which  at  that  time  numbered 
over  three  hundred  and  sixty-one  thou- 
sand men.  Enclosed  with  that  circular 
was  to  be  a  receipt  for  four  dollars  on  ac- 
count, to  apply  on  the  purchase  of  one 
of  the  war  pictures.  It  was  to  be  made 
out  in  the  name  of  the  member  and 
signed  by  the  publishers.  The  circular 
was  to  state  that  the  regular  price  of 
the  picture  was  five  dollars,  but  that 
a  comrade  of  any  Grand  Army  Post 

26 


i 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

could  secure  the  picture  for  the  nominal 
price  of  one  dollar.  The  picture  would 
be  delivered  to  him  upon  payment  of 
one  dollar,  with  the  accompanying 
receipt  for  four  dollars,  which  must  be 
attested  by  the  secretary  of  his  post. 

It  was  easy  to  imagine  how  this  plan 
would  work.  By  virtue  of  his  member- 
ship in  the  Grand  Army,  the  recipient 
was  entitled  to  secure  a  five-dollar  pic- 
ture for  one  dollar.  The  offer  would 
not  be  made  to  any  one  else.  He,  by 
virtue  of  his  membership  in  this  national 
order,  had  only  to  pay  one  dollar  to 
secure  an  equivalent  of  five  dollars. 
Let  us  admit  at  once  that  thousands  of 
these  men  did  not  care  to  pay  one  dollar 
even  for  a  five-dollar  picture.  But  how 
many  of  them,  do  you  suppose,  would 
tear  up  the  signed  receipt  for  four 
dollars?  Instead,  they  would  keep  it 
in  their  pocket,  look  at  it  every  few  days, 
mention  it  to  some  of  their  friends,  and 
end  by  making  the  generous  offer  to  one 
of  these  friends  that  if  he  would  like 

27 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

to  avail  himself  of  the  chance,  he  could 
do  it  in  his  name.  In  other  words,  John 
Brown,  as  a  G.  A.  R.  man,  is  entitled 
to  the  picture,  but  John  Brown  does  not 
care  to  buy  it.  His  friend,  John  Smith, 
who  is  not  in  the  G.  A.  R.,  however,  will 
be  very  glad  to  take  advantage  of  such 
an  opportunity,  and  so  Brown  buys  the 
picture  for  Smith  in  his  (Brown's)  name, 
paying  for  it  with  his  four-dollar  receipt 
and  Smith's  one  dollar  in  money.  In- 
asmuch as  the  sales  of  these  pictures 
would  be  naturally  among  members  of 
the  Grand  Army,  the  offer  amounted  to 
a  virtual  reduction  of  the  price  from 
five  dollars  to  one  dollar ;  yet  how  much 
more  attractive  was  this  form  of  mak- 
ing the  reduction,  which  preserved  the 
pictures  from  the  shock  of  a  precipitate 
and  sensational  discount. 


Ill 


WE  have  now  taken  two  weaknesses 
in  human  nature,  namely,  selfish- 
ness and  acquisitiveness,  and  shown 
the  baser  use  of  the  imagination  in 
business,  which  rears  its  fabric  on  such 
weaknesses  —  using  the  word  "baser" 
not  to  imply  a  moral  defect,  but  merely 
to  designate  such  usages  as  relatively 
less  pleasing  than  other  instances  which 
might  be  cited.  If  time  afforded,  it 
would  be  easily  possible  to  select  other 
weaknesses  of  mankind,  and  instance 
how  the  imagination  is  employed  in 
such  cases;  then,  to  take  the  reverse  of 
these  cases,  that  is,  the  traits  not  in 
themselves  weak  or  base,  but  of  which 
advantage  is  taken;  such,  for  example, 
as  the  love  of  the  material  or  concrete, 

29 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

the  reasoning  by  analogy,  the  impression 
of  value  by  quantity,  the  impression  of 
quality  by  multiplication  of  argument, 
and  similar  instances. 

It  must  be  remembered  always  that 
it  is  not  the  price  of  an  article  which  is 
important,  but  the  reason  for  the  price. 
Tliis  is  one  of  the  backbone  truths  of 
merchandising,  and  when  once  a  seller 
gets  a  firm  hold  of  this  fact,  and  is  able 
to  apply  it  in  its  highest  efficiency,  he 
can  almost  devastate  the  trade.  I  have 
seen  on  more  than  one  occasion  the 
delight  with  which  a  retail  advertiser 
first  clearly  grasps  this  idea.  We  can 
detect  something  of  it  in  one  of  the 
illustrations  just  used;  but  now  what  is 
the  reason  which  underlies  this  law? 
Is  it  not  this :  that  the  argument  for  the 
price  is  the  imaginative  part  of  the  trans- 
action? The  price  itself  is  absolutely 
unimaginative.  Admit  that  the  reason 
for  the  price  is  an  important  thing  in  the 
transaction,  and  that  a  high  price  with 
a  good  reason  will  sell  more  goods  than 

30 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

a  low  price  with  a  poor  reason,  and  it  is 
only  reaffirming,  in  another  form,  the 
potentiality  of  the  imagination  in  busi- 
ness. 

The  bankrupt  stock,  the  fire  sale,  the 
manufacturer's    remnants,    the    annual 
clearance,  the  removal  sale,  the  dissolu- 
tion-of-partnership  sale— what  are  these, 
and  many  more,  but  arguments  for  the 
price?     And  note  this  one  point:  that 
without  the  argument  the  price  is  pow- 
erless.    Reduce  your  fur-lined  overcoats 
from  $ioo  to  $60,  and  your  liberal  dis- 
count attracts  little  attention.     Why? 
Because  there  is  no  reasonable  explana- 
tion  for   the   reduction.      Why   should 
you   present   overcoats   to   the   public? 
But  announce  that,  owing  to  an  expira- 
tion of  your  lease,  and  the  imperative 
command  that  you  vacate  your  present 
store  within  two  weeks,  you  will  reduce 
the   price   of   your   fur-lined   overcoats 
from  $100  to   $80,   and  you  may  sell 
easily  all  you  have  to  offer.     Instinc- 
tively,    the     public    sees     the     whole 

31 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

picture — the  proprietor's  anxiety,  the 
inevitable  removal,  the  vanishing  days, 
the  final  sacrifice,  and  the  store  full  of 
eager  buyers  quick  to  seize  such  an 
opportunity.  This  is  only  half  the  re- 
duction previously  considered;  but  one 
is  business  without  imagination,  and 
the  other  is  business  with  it. 

Approach  the  whole  question  from 
another  standpoint.  Perhaps  there  is 
no  better  index  of  the  value  of  imagina- 
tion in  business  than  the  immense  im- 
portance which  attaches  to  the  selection 
of  a  name  for  any  article.  To  describe 
an  article  in  an  imaginative  vein  is  to 
sell  it  at  once  to  many  persons;  merely 
to  give  it  a  good  name  is  to  sell  it  to  a 
few.  So  important  is  this  matter  held 
to  be  by  those  who  have  successfully 
grasped  the  value  of  imagination  in 
business,  that  it  has  been  used  for  no 
less  an  object  than  the  stifling  of  com- 
petition. Let  us  assume  that  to-morrow 
you  decide  to  embark  in  the  business  of 
manufacturing  a  toilet  soap,  to  compete 

32 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

with  some  of  the  well-known  makers. 
It  is  important  that  it  should  have 
a  significant  or  attractive  name.  That 
is  a  first  consideration.  But,  right  at 
the  outset,  you  discover  that  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  secure  any  satisfactory 
name  for  a  new  soap.  Its  color,  trans- 
parency, and  clearness  suggest  the  title 
of  "amber  soap."  Yes,  surely  "amber 
soap"  does  have  an  attractive  sound. 
But  you  cannot  use  the  word  "amber," 
for  you  find  that  this  is  one  of  a  list  of 
twenty-four  possible  names  for  a  toilet 
soap,  pre-empted  by  registration  as  a 
protectionary  measure,  years  ago,  by  one 
of  the  leading  American  soap-makers. 
They  have  covered  over  one  hundred 
names  in  the  past  quarter  of  a  century, 
willingly  paying  the  registration  charges 
of  twenty-five  dollars  for  every  title. 
Of  course,  they  do  not  intend  to  use 
them;  they  register  them  to  fight  off 
competition,  believing  (and  here  is  the 
important  point!)  that  no  clever  busi- 
ness man  (and  it  is  such  competition 

33 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

which  alone  they  fear) — that  no  clever 
business  man  would  embark  in  the  en- 
terprise of  manufacturing  a  new  soap, 
when  from  the  start  he  was  prevented 
from  employing  the  powerful  weapon  of 
imagination  in  giving  it  a  suitable  name. 
If  an  establishment  like  this,  directed 
by  some  of  the  ablest  heads  in  the  busi- 
ness world,  believes  that  it  can  discour- 
age competition  by  simply  depriving 
the  would-be  competitor  of  the  appeal 
to  the  imagination  in  the  naming  of 
his  soap,  how  great  a  value  must  we 
attach  to  imagination  in  business! 

Speaking  of  pre-empting  trade  names 
against  possible  competition,  I  knew 
one  film  who  believed  in  this  above 
all  other  precautionary  measures,  and 
carried  it  to  a  great  length.  They,  too, 
manufactured  an  article  for  household 
consumption,  so  that  the  situation  was 
much  the  same  as  in  the  case  of  the 
soap-maker.  In  this  connection  I  am 
reminded  of  my  first  acquaintance  with 
them,  and  the  curious  manner  in  which 

34 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

my  employment  began;  the  affair  had 
in  it  some  unusual  and  striking  features 
in  a  business  which  was  never  without 
its  unique  situations.  One  day  in  the 
late  eighties  (I  had  been  in  business 
then  less  than  six  years)  I  received  a 
call  from  the  president  of  the  company. 
He  said  that  he  should  have  occasion 
to  use  my  services  at  some  time  in  the 
future,  and  he  preferred  now,  at  the 
very  start,  to  make  sure  that  I  formed 
no  entangling  alliance  with  any  of  his 
competitors.  He  therefore  suggested 
that  his  company  should  pay  me  a  re- 
tainer, and  that  for  that  retainer  I  need 
do  no  work,  but  merely  sign  an  agree- 
ment to  render  no  "aid  or  comfort" 
to  any  house  in  his  line  of  trade.  I  had 
already  one  or  two  similar  agreements 
to  this,  and  I  gladly  assented  to  his 
plan.  He  proposed  a  compensation  of 
one  hundred  dollars  a  month,  and  as 
this  was  merely  to  cover  his  right  to  call 
on  me  for  service  and  not  to  be  re- 
garded  as   payment   for   that   service, 

35 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

I  was  under  the  impression  that  he  was 
treating  me  very  liberally.  I  wish  now 
that  I  knew  just  what  the  true  situation 
was  at  that  time.  Perhaps,  after  all, 
it  was  only  a  part  of  that  same  business 
policy  of  his  which  had  pre-empted  all 
the  possible  names.  In  any  case,  my 
salary  was  paid  regularly  on  the  first 
day  of  each  month,  but  I  was  never 
called  on  for  any  work.  At  the  end  of 
sixteen  months  I  wrote  a  brief  letter  to 
the  effect  that  I  seemed  to  be  of  no  use 
to  them,  and  unless  some  work  was  un- 
der contemplation  I  should  prefer  to 
cancel  the  agreement.  To  tell  the  truth, 
I  thought  they  had  forgotten  that  I 
was  being  paid  a  salary  every  month, 
and  I  disliked  the  idea  of  rendering  no 
equivalent.  Their  reply  was  equally 
brief.  Work  would  come  eventually; 
meanwhile  if  they  were  satisfied,  I 
ought  to  be.  They  had  not  forgotten 
that  I  was  on  the  pay-roll. 

I  think  it  was  close  upon  two  years 
before    I    received    any    work.     Then 

36 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

came  a  day  when  three  determined  men 
descended  on  me  with  a  scheme  or  plan 
of  business  development  which  involved 
more  of  an  outlay  than  I  had  ever  faced 
before.  The  plan  had  been  entirely 
perfected  before  they  came  to  Boston; 
they  simply  wanted  it  tested  for  weak 
spots,  but  a  certain  aggressiveness  of 
manner  indicated  that  no  weak  spots 
would  be  found.  Now  it  would  have 
been  humiliating,  after  two  years  of 
drawing  salary  against  this  day  of 
reckoning,  if  I  had  no  more  to  offer 
than  a  mere  approval  of  their  scheme. 
I  thanked  my  lucky  stars  that  I  cor- 
dially disliked  the  whole  plan.  And 
yet,  somehow,  I  could  not  shoot  holes 
in  it.  All  I  could  say  was  that  in- 
stinctively I  distrusted  it,  and  I  asked 
for  twenty-four  hours  in  which  to  locate 
my  distrust  specifically.  They  went 
back  to  their  hotel,  and  I  went  behind 
a  locked  door.  In  twenty  hours  I  had 
gathered  my  array  of  projectiles,  and 
we   came   together.     For   two   days   I 

37 


429777 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

fought  that  plan  in  all  its  possible  bear- 
ings with  no  result.  Then  on  the  third 
day  the  president  of  the  company  came 
over  to  my  side.  On  the  fourth  day 
the  other  two  capitulated.  Later  I 
saw  them  off  at  the  depot,  and  my 
friend  the  president  (for  so  I  regarded 
him  now)  whispered  in  my  ear,  "You 
don't  need  to  worry  about  that  un- 
earned salary;  you've  squared  the  ac- 
count to-day." 

Referring  once  more  to  trade-names, 
more  striking  instances  of  this  endeavor 
to  intercept  competition  may  be  found 
by  a  perusal  of  the  trade  -  titles  and 
trade-marks  registered  in  Great  Britain. 
Ten  years  ago  there  were  only  27,000 
trade-names  registered  in  the  United 
States  as  against  182,000  registered  in 
England.  The  English,  from  whom 
we  have  borrowed  the  idea  of  protec- 
tion by  registration,  take  most  of  our 
American  names  that  have  any  orig- 
inality or  value,  if  the  owner  for  any 
reason  has   left  them  unregistered  at 

38 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

the  expiration  of  the  six  months  during 
which  the  trade-name  is  protected  for 
filing  in  Great  Britain.  English  manu- 
facturers have  gone  to  the  extent  of 
protecting  themselves,  not  merely  in 
their  own  line  of  goods,  but  in  all  lines 
of  manufacture,  thereby  preventing 
their  trade-name  from  becoming  com- 
monplace by  its  repeated  use.  Thus 
the  word  "Sunlight"  has  been  regis- 
tered by  its  owners,  not  merely  as  the 
name  of  a  soap,  but  for  practically 
every  article  of  household  use  to  which 
the  name  could  be  applied. 

By  a  peculiarity  of  the  English  copy- 
right laws,  it  is  not  permitted  to  cover 
every  article  with  one  name.  The 
various  articles  of  domestic  use  are  ar- 
ranged in  groups,  and  one  article  in  each 
group  must  be  left  unprotected  to  con- 
form to  the  law.  In  this  case  at  hand, 
no  little  ingenuity  has  been  used  in 
selecting  as  the  subject  of  each  omission 
an  article  to  which  the  name  "Sun- 
light"  could   scarcely   apply  —  as,   for 

39 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

example,  Sunlight  Andirons.  I  think 
this  was  one  of  the  articles  in  one  of  the 
groups  left  unprotected.  The  English 
charge  is  £io  for  each  registration,  ex- 
clusive of  all  fees,  and  some  manu- 
facturers have  expended  close  to  $50,000 
in  this  form  of  protection.  When  we 
see  shrewd  manufacturers  investing  such 
sums  on  their  belief  that  you  ruin  a 
man's  chances  when  you  curtail  his 
ability  to  employ  imagination,  is  it  not 
another  proof  of  the  value  of  imagina- 
tion in  business  ? 

Does  all  this  precaution,  this  ex- 
travagant foresight,  seem  to  place  too 
great  emphasis  on  the  value  of  a  mere 
name?  I  cannot  think  so.  Nor  would 
many  of  my  readers  if  they  had  assisted 
at  a  few  trade  christenings,  and  seen  the 
thought,  time,  and  money  expended  in 
the  search  for  a  suitable  name.  It  fell 
to  my  lot  from  time  to  time  to  supply 
titles  for  various  trade  articles.  It  was 
not  without  the  exercise  of  some  mental 
gymnastics  that  I  could  cover  the  wide- 

40 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

ly  different  demands  involved  in  find- 
ing at  once  suitable  names  for  a  stove, 
a  parasol,  and  a  cemetery.  Yet  the 
happy  choice  of  an  imaginative,  sug- 
gestive, or  picturesque  title  would  in- 
crease inevitably  the  sales  of  that 
especial  article.  Under  the  inspiration 
of  a  good  name,  even  the  cemetery 
would  become  more  popular.  Trade- 
names in  themselves  may  be  assets  of 
great  value,  and  in  some  cases,  such  as  a 
dramatic  play  or  a  patent  medicine,  it 
is  hard  to  exaggerate  the  worth  of  a 
good  title. 


IV 


LET  me  try  now  to  illustrate  the  use 
^  of  imagination  in  business  by  three 
business  problems.  I  select  them  part- 
ly because  of  their  remoteness  from  the 
present  in  point  of  time  (there  being 
little  harm  in  my  speaking  of  the  oc- 
currences at  this  late  date),  and  partly 
because  they  typify  widely  different 
cases. 

The  first  is  a  retail  problem,  the  cir- 
cumstance of  a  carpet  house.  The  gen- 
eral question  was  whether  the  volume 
of  business  could  be  enlarged.  This 
firm  was  advertising  extensively  in  the 
daily  papers,  and  such  advertising  is  the 
fool's  first  resort  and  the  wise  man's 
last  one.  It  is  the  proper  remedy  in 
about  one  in  four  cases  of  the  kind  here 

42 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

considered.  It  could  hardly  be  used 
advantageously  in  a  carpet  business, 
for  the  reason  that  carpets  are  not 
tempting  merchandise.  In  other  words, 
one  is  not  prompted  by  any  advertise- 
ment to  rush  out  and  buy  carpets.  One 
buys  them  when  one  needs  them.  The 
buying  of  carpets  is  done  in  a  cold- 
blooded way. 

Once  a  year,  rarely  oftener,  a  family 
decides  that  it  wants  a  new  carpet.  This 
is  usually  at  the  strenuous  period  known 
as  "spring  cleaning."  But  there  is  a 
more  important  time  than  this,  and  that 
is  when  the  family  is  removing  from 
one  house  to  another.  Probably  from 
twenty  to  thirty  per  cent,  of  all  buying 
of  carpets  is  induced  by  a  change  of 
residence.  Estimated  roughly,  there  is 
one  day  in  the  year  when  each  house- 
holder may  buy  carpets;  accordingly, 
on  three  hundred  and  sixty-four  days 
of  the  year  the  advertising  of  specific 
carpets  for  that  man  is  wasted.  For 
every  man  it  would   be   wasted   three 

43 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

hundred  and  sixty-four  out  of  three 
hundred  and  sixty-five  days,  and  such  a 
proportion  of  waste  will  not  permit  of 
profitable  advertising.  The  important 
thing,  then,  was  to  get  at  people  when 
they  were  about  to  move,  and  it  seemed 
to  me  at  the  start  that  the  key  to  the 
situation  was  the  real-estate  agent.  In 
this  direction  work  was  begun. 

The  plan  was  to  secure  from  real- 
estate  agents,  for  some  slight  considera- 
tion, a  complete  record  of  all  changes 
and  removals  from  house  to  house  in 
that  city  and  its  suburbs.  The  work 
had  proceeded  only  a  short  distance, 
however,  before  it  became  evident  that 
this  was  a  wrong  analysis  of  the  case. 
The  real-estate  agent  was  not  the  correct 
clew;  it  was  the  furniture-mover!  Many 
persons  might  effect  a  change  of  resi- 
dence, especially  in  the  upper  class  (and 
these  changes  were  most  valuable), 
without  the  transaction  passing  through 
the  hands  of  any  real-estate  agent.  But 
no  one  could  remove  from  one  residence 

44 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

to  another,  whether  it  was  from  a  great 
establishment  on  Washington  Square 
to  another  on  Fifth  Avenue,  or  whether 
a  lodger  with  one  trunk  moved  from  a 
room  on  Bleecker  Street  to  a  room  on 
Houston  Street,  without  employing  the 
furniture-mover. 

Accordingly  new  plans  were  laid,  a 
competent  man  was  engaged  to  carry 
them  out,  and  work  proceeded  on  the 
following  lines.  I  formed  a  club  of  all 
the  furniture-movers  in  that  city  and  its 
suburbs.  Of  course,  there  w^ere  isolated 
cases  here  and  there  of  men  who  would 
not  "club, ' '  but  within  ten  days  an  organ- 
ization was  perfected,  comprising  forty- 
one  of  the  leading  furniture-movers, 
employing  seventy-six  wagons.  A  for- 
mal agreement  was  entered  into  and 
signed  with  each  furniture-mover.  The 
consideration  for  which  they  performed 
their  service  was  comparatively  slight. 
It  has  long  been  a  custom  with  business 
houses  to  pay  for  the  painting  of  a 
delivery  wagon  on  the  condition  that  it 

45 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

shall  bear  their  advertisement ;  the  name 
of  the  owner  of  the  wagon  then  appears 
in  small  letters,  and  the  wagon  os- 
tensibly is  a  delivery  wagon  of  the  house 
whose  name  it  bears.  It  is  generally 
supposed  that  an  advertisement  thus 
painted  on  a  wagon  moving  about 
through  the  streets  of  a  city  for  a  year  is 
well  worth  the  cost  of  the  painter's  bill. 
This  old  idea  that  furniture-movers 
like  to  escape  the  painting  of  their 
wagons  was  made  to  do  duty  here,  and 
the  repainting  became  a  part  of  the  com- 
pensation given  to  them  under  the 
agreement.  Their  wagons  were  all  paint- 
ed with  the  name  of  this  carpet  house ; 
a  further  consideration  was  that  the 
house  should  keep  them  repaired  at  its 
own  expense.  They  were  to  be  re- 
painted as  often  as  required,  say  once  in 
two  years,  and  all  repairs  were  to  be 
paid  for  unless  they  were  occasioned 
by  gross  carelessness.  Contracts  were 
made  with  four  or  five  leading  carriage- 
painters  in  the  city  in  which  this  oc- 

46 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

curred,  and  exceptionally  low  rates 
secured  by  reason  of  the  large  quantity 
of  work.  Similar  contracts  were  also 
made  with  wheelwrights  for  repairs. 

To  describe  the  consideration  given 
by  the  furniture-mover  to  the  carpet 
house,  let  me  tell  what  would  have  hap- 
pened had  you,  at  any  time  desiring  to 
move  from  one  part  of  that  city  to  an- 
other, called  upon  one  of  these  furniture- 
movers,  with  a  view  to  securing  his  ser- 
vices. The  conversation  might  have 
been  substantially  on  these  lines : 

Customer.  I  am  about  to  move  from 
Thirt3^-second  Street  to  Fifty-seventh 
Street.  I  don't  know  exactly  how  many 
loads  there  will  be,  but  it  is  an  ordinary 
houseful  of  furniture.  I  should  like  to 
know  your  charge  for  the  job. 

Furniture- Mover.  Where  are  you  now 
located  ? 

{Customer  gives  his  residence.) 

And  what  is  the  new  location  ? 

(Customer  gives  the  address.  Both  re- 
plies are  at  once  entered  on  a  slip.) 

47 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

When  do  you  propose  to  move? 

{The  date  is  given.) 

Just  how  many  loads  would  there  be  ? 
How  many  rooms  are  there  in  the  house  ? 

(Replies  noted.) 

Customer.  Do  you  employ  reliable 
and  satisfactory  men  ? 

Furniture-Mover.  Yes,  sir.  Here  is 
my  business  card,  and  you  will  see  upon 
the  back  of  it  what  John  Smith  &  Co., 
the  well-known  carpet  house,  say  about 
me. 

At  this  he  hands  the  customer  a  busi- 
ness card,  supplied  to  him  without 
charge  by  the  carpet  house,  and  on  the 
back  of  this  business  card  there  is  a 
letter  from  John  Smith  &  Co.,  stating 
that  they  understand  that  this  man  is 
a  reliable  furniture-mover  who  employs 
suitable  help.  The  attitude  with  which 
the  furniture-mover  proudly  regards  the 
endorsement  of  John  Smith  &  Co.  is,  in 
itself,  an  evidence  that  in  the  furniture- 
moving  business,  at  least,  Smith  &  Co. 
is  readily  conceded  to  be  the  leading  car- 

48 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

pet  house  of  the  city.  In  the  mean  time 
the  customer  sees  along  the  curb  a  num- 
ber of  neat-looking,  attractive  wagons, 
on  each  of  which  is  the  advertisement 
of  John  Smith  &  Co. 

By  direct  agreement  with  the  Smith 
carpet  house,  the  furniture-mover  is 
obliged  to  fill  out  within  one  hour,  and 
forward  to  them  by  mail,  a  printed 
blank  as  follows: 

Name  of  party  about  to  move: ; 

present    address    of    party: ;    new 

location  to  which  he  is  to  move: ; 

date  when  he  expects   to   move: ; 

number  of  loads  he  will  carry: ;  etc. 

From  forty-five  to  ninety  of  these 
blanks  were  received  daily  at  the  carpet 
house.  When  the  system  was  started, 
it  was  the  custom  to  send  a  representa- 
tive, with  samples,  to  call  immediately 
upon  the  parties  about  to  move.  For 
a  very  short  time  one  representative  did 
all  this  work,  but  within  a  few  months 
it  required  six  representatives,  of  whom 
three  went  in  "sampler"  carts  built  for 

49 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

this  Special  work,  mounted  on  two 
wheels,  and  in  appearance  not  unlike 
an  Adams  Express  money-wagon.  The 
carts  were  finely  fitted  up,  and  con- 
tained a  complete  line  of  samples,  not 
only  of  carpetings,  but  of  upholsteries, 
draperies,  shades,  etc.  The  memoran- 
dums received  at  the  carpet  house  went 
immediately  to  the  manager  of  the  re- 
tail department;  by  him  they  were 
separated  according  to  their  locality; 
the  presumably  large  customers  were 
handed  to  the  more  expert  representa- 
tives, while  some  poor  devil  who  was 
moving  with  a  trunk  from  one  room  to 
another  received  no  call,  but,  instead, 
a  circular  or  special  letter,  according  to 
his  importance,  in  which  the  house  of- 
fered its  services  in  connection  with  any 
refurnishing  which  he  might  have  to  do, 
and  suggested  that  one  of  their  repre- 
sentatives call  with  samples  on  his  daily 
round,  for  which,  of  course,  there  would 
be  no  charge.  Meanwhile  all  newspaper 
advertising  was  stopped. 

so 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

The  business  grew  to  such  size  that  at 
the  end  of  a  year  the  carpet  house  had 
bought  and  was  operating  its  own  repair 
and  paint  shop.  The  plan  worked  out 
substantially  as  first  conceived,  with  one 
exception.  It  was  found  necessary  to 
employ  one  man  whose  sole  business  it 
was  to  go  daily  among  the  furniture- 
movers  and  keep  them  sharply  up  to 
their  end  of  the  agreement,  insuring  im- 
mediate reports  on  all  names  and  com- 
plete memorandums.  This  experiment 
showed  one  solution  of  how  to  enlarge  a 
retail  carpet  business.  It  was  literally 
a  gold-mine,  and  the  business  of  the 
house  was  greatly  increased. 


So  the  retailer  meets  his  difficulties 
and  applies  imagination  in  their 
solution.  But  the  wholesaler  has  his 
problems  too,  and  we  shall  find  that  the 
same  panacea  has  lost  none  of  its  virtues 
as  we  examine  a  plan  for  the  extension 
of  a  business  in  lithographic  novelties. 
This  house  was  one  of  the  three  firms 
who  had  supplied  the  great  market  of 
the  world  with  its  Christmas  cards.  The 
Christmas  -  card  industry  had  waned, 
but  they  had  caught  it  on  its  flood,  and 
nicely  calculated  the  moment  of  the 
ebb.  The  instant  that  the  upper  class 
of  society  abandoned  the  sending  of 
Christmas  cards,  this  firm  was  keen 
enough  to  realize  that  the  custom  was 
destined  to  have  a  short  life,  and  from 

52 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

that  day  drew  in  its  manufacturing, 
carried  a  short  stock,  and  was  well 
equipped  to  take  advantage  of  any  new 
turn.  (The  firm  afterward  made  a 
study  of  the  question  whether  the  cus- 
tom of  sending  Christmas  cards  could 
be  re-established,  deciding  finally  that 
as  the  custom  had  gone  out  through  the 
upper  class  of  society,  it  could  only  re- 
enter through  that  class,  and  no  way 
of  re-establishing  it  in  that  direction 
seemed  to  suggest  itself.  Many  ways 
w^ere  open  to  revive  the  custom  in  other 
classes  of  society,  but  this  firm  wisely 
concluded  that  it  would  be  impossible 
to  work  the  revival  upward.  The  pop- 
ularity of  the  bicycle  is  the  only  excep- 
tion I  know  to  this  general  rule,  and 
it  has  been  one  of  the  curious  anomalies 
in  trade  movements  in  recent  years.) 

The  establishment  in  question  then 
turned  its  attention  to  the  manufacture 
of  art  novelties,  booklets,  hangers,  etc. 
For  these  there  was  a  fairly  large  de- 
mand,  and   the   question   was   how   to 

53 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

double  that  trade.  It  was  a  difficult 
problem,  for  the  goods  were  marketed 
entirely  by  little  stationery  and  period- 
ical stores — about  the  smallest  calibre 
of  storekeeper  that  can  be  imagined. 
It  was  out  of  the  question  to  sell  to  the 
consumer  direct,  as  that  would  in- 
stantly antagonize  the  retailers  then 
handling  the  goods.  It  seemed  almost 
impossible  to  infuse  any  enterprise  and 
life  into  these  little  two-by-four  store- 
keepers, in  whose  hands  lay  absolutely 
the  future  prosperity  of  the  business. 
However,  upon  a  closer  study  of  the 
conditions,  the  point  which  attracted 
my  attention  was  the  divergence  in  the 
volume  of  business  done  by  different 
stores.  Two,  located  in  Cleveland,  Ohio, 
and  in  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  amid 
relatively  similar  conditions,  and  ap- 
pealing to  the  same  class,  were  doing 
a  totally  different  business.  The  two 
constituencies  were  substantially  alike; 
but  one  store  was  doing  a  business  of 
$300,  and  the  other  of  $3,000. 

54 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

This  indicated  broadly  that  but  few 
of  these  little  storekeepers  understood 
how  to  push  his  business,  and  it  at  once 
suggested  the  course  which  should  be 
taken:  first,  to  acquaint  the  trade,  im- 
mediately and  confidentially,  with  this 
state  of  affairs;  and,  secondly,  for  this 
house  to  offer,  as  a  committee  of  the 
whole,  to  investigate  the  various  meth- 
ods by  which  the  business  could  be 
developed,  reporting  estimates  and  fig- 
ures, with  attested  results  as  to  each 
method.  In  other  words,  if  a  man  in 
Philadelphia  had  employed  successfully 
the  method  of  making  five,  ten,  fifteen, 
and  twenty-five-cent  counters,  the  house 
proposed  to  investigate  the  whole  system 
and  its  results,  and  report  its  findings 
to  all  who  joined  the  movement.  If 
another  man  in  another  city  had  es- 
tablished one-dollar,  two-dollar,  three- 
dollar,  and  five-dollar  packets,  and  made 
a  great  success,  the  workings  of  that  sys- 
tem would  be  explained,  telling  just  what 
to  avoid  and  what  to  do.     In  a  similar 

55 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

way,  to  investigate  the  method  of  send- 
ing canvassers,  with  books  of  samples, 
to  interview  customers  in  person;  the 
wisdom  of  advertising  in  magazines; 
and  all  the  different  ways  by  which  one 
and  another  man  in  different  parts  of 
the  country  had  made  any  success. 

It  was  supposed  that  possibly '  three 
hundred  dealers  might  join  this  move- 
ment. The  first  circular  was  sent  out, 
and  within  six  weeks  twenty-nine  hun- 
dred small  storekeepers  and  their  clerks 
had  united  with  the  lithographing  firm 
in  the  undertaking.  The  movement 
was  continued  successfully  for  several 
years.  It  grew  out  of  its  original 
limitations,  and  the  monthly  reports 
began  finally  to  discuss  methods  of 
salesmanship,  taking  individual  arti- 
cles and  illustrating  various  methods 
of  presentment. 

Here  we  see  a  different  application  of 
imagination,  a  sort  of  outward  appHca- 
tion  to  lubricate  the  stiffening  joints  of 
business.     Let  me   now,   as   the   third 

56 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

illustration,  take  an  instance  where  the 
medicine  was  compounded  to  be  taken 
internally.  It  was  the  question  of  a 
humble  employe.  We  will  say  his 
name  was  Mills,  and  he  was  one  of  the 
army  of  workers  in  the  service  of  a 
wholesale  and  retail  clothing  house.  He 
came,  to  me  with  his  serious  problem: 
he  had  been  employed  by  this  house  for 
three  years  in  the  wholesale  depart- 
ment; he  had  received  one  small  raise 
of  salary  at  the  end  of  the  first  year, 
and  now,  after  two  years  of  waiting,  he 
was  side-tracked,  as  he  thought,  hope- 
lessly stalled  on  the  road  to  business 
success,  one  of  the  innumerable  teeth 
in  the  mighty  gear,  of  no  special  value, 
and  with  no  prospects  whatever  for  the 
future.  He  wanted  to  marry  (on  seven 
dollars  a  week !) ,  and  this  had  added  to 
his  discontent  with  his  surroundings.  He 
came  to  ask  me  whether  he  had  not  bet- 
ter give  up  his  situation,  and  trust  to 
luck  to  find  something  better.  I  urged 
at  once  against  such  a  course,  and  told 

57 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

him  to  look  for  something  better  while 
still  holding  his  present  situation.  He 
said  he  had  tried  that  for  some  time, 
but  found  himself  restless.  I  said  to 
him,  "Mills,  the  important  thing  for 
you  in  this  matter  is  to  ascertain  wheth- 
er you  are  paid  all  that  you  are  worth; 
and,  that  settled,  whether  you  can  make 
yourself  worth  any  more.  But  first  of 
all  let  us  see  if  you  can  make  yourself 
worth  any  more,  whether  you  are  paid 
it  or  not.  If  you  can,  you  had  better 
stick,  and  look  for  your  raise  at  the  first 
fair  opportunity."  He  agreed  with  me 
in  my  hypothesis,  but  said  he  did  not 
quite  understand  how  that  could  be 
found  out.  I  said,  "I  cannot  find  it  out 
to-day,  but  if  you  will  put  yourself  in 
my  hands  absolutely  for  three  months, 
I  will  guarantee  that  we  shall  both  have 
an  answer  to  that  question. ' '  He  agreed, 
and  I  went  ahead.  Here  were  my  in- 
structions to  him: 

"For  the  first  thirty  days  I  want  you 
to  put  your  mind  on  one  thing  only; 

58 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

drop  all  outside  nonsense,  and  focus  your 
entire  attention,  thought,  and  energy 
upon  this  question:  By  what  method 
which  you  can  devise  can  your  house 
sell  $100,000  worth  more  of  goods  every 
year  than  they  are  now  selling  ?  (Mills 
gasped!)  Or  $10,000  worth  more?  Or 
$1,000  worth  more?  Or  $100  worth 
more?  When  you  have  discovered  your 
plan,  work  it  all  out  on  paper,  put  down 
the  figures  in  black  and  white,  verify 
every  item  of  expense,  and  take  the 
complete  showing,  at  a  favorable  mo- 
ment, to  the  man  on  whom  you  must 
depend  for  your  raise  of  salary.  How- 
ever good  the  idea  may  be,  when  you 
present  it  to  him  view  it  tentatively;  tell 
him  as  modestly  as  you  can  that  you  be- 
lieve that  the  prosperity  of  the  house 
should  be  as  truly  your  concern  as  his; 
that  both  your  fortunes  are  in  the  same 
boat;  say  frankly  that  you  hope  it  may 
not  seem  presumptuous  that  you  should 
seem  to  suggest  reforms  or  changes,  but 
that  you  are  really  interested  in  the  suc- 

59 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

cess  of  the  business,  and  it  is  this  interest 
which  must  be  blamed  for  any  seeming 
intrusion  on  your  part.  Put  it  to  him 
modestly;  if  he  decides  that  the  idea  is 
not  good,  say  you  are  sorry  for  having 
wasted  his  time,  and  get  out  as  quickly 
as  you  can.  Then  go  to  work  on  an- 
other idea.  When  you  carry  this  to 
him,  if  he  negatives  it  also,  make  your 
excuses  and  ask  him  if  there  is  any 
objection  to  your  still  studying  and 
trying  to  plan  out  some  method  by 
which  the  business  can  be  extend- 
ed." 

In  a  general  way,  with  a  good  deal 
more  of  explanation,  I  think  I  made  him 
understand  how  he  was  to  present  his 
idea,  so  that  in  no  case  would  he  be  in 
danger  of  losing  his  position  or  the  good 
will  of  the  firm,  by  seeming  to  have  their 
interests  very  closely  at  heart.  Thirty 
days  passed,  and  Mills  came  to  me.  His 
report  was  brief.  With  all  his  thinking, 
he  had  found  no  method  by  which  the 
business  of  the  firm  could  be  extended 

60 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

even  one  hundred  dollars  a  year.  I 
then  put  him  to  work  upon  his  second 
month's  labor,  which  was  this:  "See 
whether  you  can  discover  any  method 
by  which,  while  losing  no  present  ad- 
vantage or  trade,  the  firm  can  transact 
its  present  volume  of  business  with 
greater  economy,  so  that,  by  your 
improved  methods  of  conducting  the 
business,  there  shall  be  effected  a  sav- 
ing of  $50,000  a  year;  or  $5,000  a  year; 
or  $500  a  year;  or  $50  a  year/"  I 
thought  he  drew  a  rather  long  breath  as 
he  left  me  to  go  to  work  for  thirty  days 
on  this  proposition ;  but  he,  more  or  less 
manfully,  went  through  the  second 
stage  of  his  labors,  and  at  the  end  of 
another  thirty  days  he  came  back  to 
me  with  his  report.  He  had  been  able 
to  discover  no  new  method  whereby  the 
firm  could  economize  on  its  present 
system.  He  had,  however,  discovered 
one  thing — namely,  that  he  would  not 
need  to  go  ahead  for  another  thirty  days 
with  our  experiment,  for  he  had  about 

61 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

made  up  his  mind  that  he  would  con- 
tinue where  he  was. 

I  said  to  him,  "So,  Mills,  you  don't 
care  for  any  more  of  my  advice  ?  Well, 
this  time,  I  am  going  to  give  it  to  you 
without  your  wanting  it.  My  boy,  just 
realize  for  one  moment  where  you  stand. 
With  the  enormous  volume  of  clothing 
business  which  is  being  done,  and  with 
the  undoubted  expansion  which  can 
be  effected,  you  are  not  able,  though 
you  have  worked  three  years  in  this 
house,  to  increase  the  volume  of  this 
business  one  hundred  dollars  a  year; 
with  the  elaborate  and  necessarily  waste- 
ful methods  in  which  that  great  business 
is  transacted,  you  are  not  near  enough 
to  it  to  be  able  to  point  out  a  better 
system  in  any  department  whereby  the 
small  sum  of  fifty  dollars  a  year  may 
be  saved.  Now,  Mills,  let  me  give  you  a 
last  word  of  advice,  and  it  is  valuable 
advice.  My  boy,  lie  low!  Attract  just 
as  little  attention  to  yourself  as  you  can. 
Don't  let  the  proprietors  or  manager  re- 

62 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

member  that  you  have  been  three  years 
in  their  employ,  if  you  can  help  it.  You 
are  an  absolutely  unproductive  man.  If 
they  knew  how  little  capable  you  are  of 
development  and  progress,  they  would 
change  you  off  to-morrow  for  some  young 
man  of  greater  promise.  Lie  low,  my 
boy.  Keep  out  of  prominence  as  much 
as  you  can,  and  go  down  on  your  knees 
to-night  and  thank  God  that  you  have 
got  a  situation  where  you  are  paid  all 
that  you  are  worth.  I  don't  mean  that 
you  are  a  bit  inferior  to  thousands  of 
other  young  men  who  are  in  the  stores 
and  wholesale  houses  in  this  city;  but 
you,  like  them,  are  simply  sitting  upon 
the  head  of  the  one  brainy  man  who  sits 
in  the  counting-room.  He  has  to  solve 
all  these  problems.  You  and  fifty 
others  in  your  establishment  are  just 
sitting  on  top  of  his  head,  like  so  many 
dead  weights.  If  the  business  prospers 
you  expect  a  raise  of  salary,  when  it  is 
his  head-work  that  has  gained  every  inch 
of  the  progress.  He  has  to  carry  you  all. 

63 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

The  young  man  went  off,  sadder  and 
wiser  than  he  came.  For  the  four  years 
thereafter  in  which  I  was  able  to  follow 
his  course,  he  held  the  same  place  and  at 
the  same  salary.  Now,  in  a  last  word, 
what  was  the  object  of  this  experiment  ? 
Of  course,  I  didn't  expect  that  this  boy 
was  going  to  revolutionize  the  clothing 
trade.  It  was  simply  to  find  out 
whether  he  had  in  him  any  imagination 
which  he  could  employ  in  his  business. 
I  was  willing  to  stake  my  prediction  of 
his  fate  on  the  result  of  that  one  ques- 
tion, and  I  think  the  years  have  shown 
him  that  I  was  right. 

But  now  the  reader  may  ask  whether 
it  is  possible  to  carry  the  helpful  em- 
ployment of  imagination  still  further 
down  into  the  ranks  of  unskilled  labor. 
Indeed  it  is  possible,  and  it  is  just  the 
unskilled  laborer  who  most  benefits 
from  its  use.  For  him  a  very  little 
imagination  will  go  a  long  way  and  often 
work  wonders.  It  only  needs  that  you 
shall  supply  it,  and  tell  him  how  to  use 

64 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

it.  We  have  already  seen  imagination 
applied  to  the  bootblack's  business; 
now  let  us  take  the  most  hopeless 
situation  that  can  be  found — that  of 
the  unpractical,  stranded  man,  out  of 
employment,  knowing  no  trade,  having 
no  capital  (except  a  man's  ordinary 
strength),  and  without  hope,  courage, 
or  faith  in  himself.  We  all  know  such 
cases.  They  are  simply  men  who  have 
failed  many  times,  and  finally  lost  heart 
completely.  They  are  willing  to  work, 
but  they  have  no  work,  don't  know  how 
to  get  it,  don't  know  what  work  to  get, 
don't  know  how  to  do  it  properly  when 
they  get  it.  To  such  straits  has  many 
an  honest,  self-respecting  man  fallen 
under  the  repeated  blows  of  fortune. 
His  unpracticality  made  the  failures, 
the  failures  made  the  despondency,  the 
despondency  paralyzed  the  will. 

Now  what  can  we  do  for  him  ?  How 
shall  we  get  him  up  on  his  feet?  You 
can  ease  your  pain  by  giving  him  money, 
and  so  sinking  him  a  Httle  lower.     Try 

65 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

for  something  much   finer   than   that. 
Why  not  give  his  case  the  benefit  of 
just  a  little  of  that  imagination  that  we 
have   been   considering,    and   that  will 
come  to  your  aid  if  you  will  simply  put 
yourself  for  a  few  minutes  squarely  into 
his  shoes,  and  then  ask  yourself  what 
you  w^ould  do  if  you  were  he  and  needed 
work.     Don't  tell  him  to  apply  at  some 
of  the  big  stores  or  factories ;  he  has  made 
many  such  applications;  his  own  poor 
imagination  has  helped  him  to  that  ex- 
tent.    Keep  him  away  from  the  beaten 
track!    There  are   professions   and  oc- 
cupations to  be  discovered  all  around 
you  that  as  yet  haven't  been  worked  at 
all.     I  will  tell  you  what  was  suggested 
the  other  day  to  one  poor  fellow  of  this 
sort.     He  was  told  to  make  a  business 
of  going  round  to  houses  and  washing 
pet  dogs  for  their  owners.     You  laugh 
at  it  perhaps,  but  it  didn't  take  over  a 
month  to  create  for  that  poor  man  a 
good  business  that  was  non-competitive 
and    independent.     He    charged    fifty 

66 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

cents  a  dog,  and  in  most  cases  it  was 
a  regular  weekly  service.  It  was  not 
difficult  to  get  the  business.  There 
was  no  one  else  doing  it,  and  your  wife 
will  tell  you  that  the  washing  of  a  dog  is 
not  the  scheduled  work  of  any  one  of  the 
maids  in  the  house.  I  admit  it's  not 
easy  work,  nor  always  agreeable,  but 
personally  I  would  rather  do  it  than 
sell  coal-hods  in  the  basement  of  a  de- 
partment store  from  eight  o'clock  in  the 
morning  till  six  o'clock  at  night.  In 
the  dog-washing  business  you  are  inde- 
pendent; you  work  for  yourself;  you 
operate  a  genuine  industry;  no  super- 
intendent dictates  your  hours,  or  dis- 
charges you  at  his  pleasure;  you  are 
your  own  boss.  This  last  may  seem  a 
little  thing,  perhaps,  but  to  the  man 
who  has  one  spark  of  ambition  or  one 
remnant  of  self-esteem  yet  left  to  him 
it  may  mean  much.  It  is  a  finer 
thing  to  make  a  human  being  fit  for 
liberty  than  to  set  him  free,  and  in 
this  small  chance  to  govern  his  own 

67 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

career  there  is  the  seed  of  true  inde- 
pendence. 

The  same  rule  holds  good  with  that 
peculiarly  unfortunate  person — the  in- 
digent gentlewoman.  In  every  such 
case  there  is  usually  some  forgotten  ac- 
complishment, some  unused  capacity, 
some  metier,  which  can  be  made  to  yield 
a  decent  livelihood  by  employing  a  lit- 
tle imaginative  skill  in  its  application. 
The  woman's  exchange  of  industries  (if 
there  is  one  near  at  hand)  is  a  valuable 
ally.  I  knew  one  case  where  a  long- 
treasured  family  receipt  for  a  certain 
kind  of  cake  was  given,  and  after  a  little 
experimenting  the  cake  became  widely 
popular.  To-day  it  is  a  business  in 
itself,  and  the  making  of  this  cake  gives 
employment  to  several  persons.  I  knew 
of  another  lady  who  was  also  compelled 
to  earn  her  living,  and  to  whom  it  was 
said,  "People  are  very  negligent  about 
supplying  themselves  with  postage- 
stamps.  There  are  letter-boxes  every' 
where,  but  few  places  for  buying  stamps 

68 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

Go  into  the  thickly  settled  avenues  and 
try  the  apartment  houses.  Carry  with 
you  a  large  and  assorted  stock  of  every 
denomination  of  postage-stamps,  with 
some  sizes  of  stamped  envelopes  and 
post-cards.  At  every  door  say,  'I  sell 
postage  -  stamps  on  commission.  You 
can  buy  of  me  anything  you  want  at 
cost,  with  an  extra  charge  of  five  cents 
for  the  accommodation.'"  She  went 
to  work.  Perhaps  it  was  that  people 
were  interested  merely  in  the  novelty 
of  the  service,  but  in  any  case  the  lady 
found  sufficient  business  awaiting  her, 
and  she  got  a  fair  living  out  of  it.  This 
was  long  ago,  before  the  present  strict 
rules  against  peddling  in  apartment 
houses. 

Let  me  tell  you  of  another  woman. 
It  was  just  before  the  halcyon  days  of 
electric  lighting,  when  people  were  mul- 
tiplying the  use  of  piano-lamps,  read- 
ing-lamps, student  -  lamps,  and  every 
kind  of  patent  burner.  She  was  told  to 
perfect  herself  in  the  proper  care  of 

69 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

lamps  and  become  an  expert  in  cleaning 
them,  trimming  and  fitting  wicks,  reg- 
ulating the  height  and  smoothness  of 
the  flame,  and,  in  short,  making  those 
lamps  bum  with  flawless  brilliancy. 
She  did  this,  and  with  surprising  speed 
she  soon  had  a  business  of  her  own. 
Her  Httle  business  card  announced  that 
she  would  take  entire  expert  care  of  all 
the  lamps  in  any  house  for  a  small 
nominal  charge,  keeping  them  filled, 
trimmed,  and  practically  odorless  be- 
cause clean.  Here  was  the  opportunity 
to  get  rid  of  a  daily  chore  which  was 
peculiarly  repugnant  to  most  house- 
keepers.    No  wonder  the  business  grew! 

Similar  instances  might  be  cited,  but 
they  would  only  serve  to  accentuate  the 
one  important  lesson  in  all  this  kind  of 
practical  philanthropy  —  namely,  keep 
away  from  the  beaten  track,  and  offer 
the  public  some  new  and  unperformed 
service  of  practical  utility. 

(Yesterday  I  had  just  finished  writing 
the  above  incident  when  a  lady  came  to 

70 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

me  and  said,  "I  have  found  a  needy 
gentlewoman  who  must  have  a  means 
of  liveHhood.  I  have  tried  to  use  your 
'Imagination'  formula  in  her  case,  and 
here  is  the  result:  I  am  going  to  have 
her  make  peanut  bread  for  diabetes 
patients."  Then  she  explained  to  me 
certain  facts;  it  appears  that  peanut 
bread  is  a  most  needed  diet  in  the  treat- 
ment of  diabetes;  the  disease  is  a  very 
common  one;  yet  no  one  sells  peanut 
bread  and  it  is  quite  difficult  to  make  it. 
I  think  her  idea  is  excellent,  and  I  be- 
lieve it  is  practical.  It  will  be  an  easy 
matter  to  reach  such  patients  through 
the  medical  profession  and  the  drug- 
gists. Perhaps  this  idea  has  started 
one  woman  on  the  road  to  indepen- 
dence.    Let  us  hope  so!) 


VI 


IN  the  search  for  some  course  of  action 
which  shall  change  an  existing  situa- 
tion of  business  depression  and  accom- 
plish a  desired  infusion  of  new  trade, 
we  must  beware  of  using  mere  invention, 
which  is  a  very  different  quality  from 
imagination.  Invention  works  blind- 
folded ;  it  may  hit  the  mark  at  which  it 
aims,  or  it  may  not.  In  either  case  it 
does  not  realize  and  interpret  the  vital 
facts  as  they  exist  (which  is  what  we 
require) ,  but  it  creates  new  and  original 
formulas  which  often  shine  with  ficti- 
tious splendor  because  they  are  bizarre 
and  novel.  This  random  shooting,  this 
quest  for  the  wonder-worker,  is  very 
different  from  that  penetrative  imagina- 
tion which,   taking  the   facts  as  they 

72 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

plainly  exist,  deals  alone  with  them, 
vitalizes  them,  realizes  their  significance, 
interprets  their  meanings,  and  follows 
them  to  their  last  logical  conclusion. 
That  is  the  work  of  imagination,  and 
let  us  remember  that  it  is  imagination 
alone  which  can  make  a  genuine  dis- 
covery. Afterward,  when  the  discovery 
has  been  made,  it  is  invention  that 
comes  in  and  decides  the  device  or  plan 
by  which  the  discovery  shall  be  worked 
out. 

This  distinction  between  imagination 
and  invention  is  no  mere  insistence  on 
catch-words,  but  a  fact  of  great  im- 
portance which  must  be  kept  always  in 
mind  in  every  effort  to  solve  a  business 
problem.  A  single  illustration  will  make 
this  clear.  In  the  work  of  "business 
counsel,"  which  for  twenty  years  I 
undertook  to  perform,  it  was  dangerous 
and  costly  to  blunder.  In  fact,  pro- 
longed blunderings  will  put  the  "busi- 
ness counsellor"  out  of  business.  I 
lived  under  the  perpetual  penalty  of 

73 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

"results";  nothing  else  justified  the  un- 
pleasant position  of  assuming  to  tell  a 
man  how  to  mind  his  own  business.     In- 
evitably the  trial  of  my  proposed  plans 
involved  expense,  often  committed  the 
house  to  a  distinct  "stand"  before  the 
public,  and  if  unsuccessful  would  spell 
delay.     Furthermore,  no  mere  brief  trial 
of  a  new  plan  was  a  sufficient  test.     The 
demonstration  might  be  accomplished 
in  a  month's  time,  but  more  often  it  was 
three  months,   frequently   six   to  nine 
months,    and   perhaps   a   year.     Then, 
too,  money  had  to  be  spent,  sometimes 
in  large  sums.     Now,  it  requires  very 
little   courage    to   spend    your  client's 
money  on  a  carefully  approved  and  ex- 
haustive  advertising  campaign   in   the 
daily  papers,  for  many  have  travelled 
this  path  before  and  "Experience  work- 
cth  hope."     But  very  rarely  was  my 
prolilem    as    simple    as    that.     I    was 
breaking  new  trails,  and  not  hunting  in 
company.     Of  course  I  made  failures — 
but  here  is  the  point  which  I  wish  to 

74 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

impress!  When  I  failed  it  was  almost 
always  because  I  had  unconsciously 
substituted  invention  for  imagination. 
I  had  struck  a  "snag"  perhaps,  then 
grown  weary  in  trying  to  circumvent  or 
remove  it,  and  working  along  the  line 
of  least  resistance,  I  had  "invented"  a 
remedy.  I  had  worked  from  the  out- 
side and  not  from  the  inside. 

And  now  for  the  illustration  of  this. 
The  circumstance  I  am  about  to  relate 
will  long  be  fresh  in  my  memory,  for  it 
was  the  hardest  nut  I  ever  tried  to  crack, 
and  my  effort  extended  over  a  period 
of  several  years.  In  the  interest  of  the 
makers  of  elastic  webbing  I  had  tried 
to  popularize  the  Congress  shoe.  The 
chief  complaint  against  it  had  been  that 
the  elastic  would  weaken,  and  the  shoe 
consequently  lose  its  shape  before  its 
complete  service  had  been  rendered. 
A  plan  was  devised  for  insuring  the  best 
grade  of  elastic  for  the  entire  life  of  the 
shoe  without  extra  charge,  so  that,  if 
for  any  cause  the  elastic  failed,  the  shoes 

75 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

could  be  handed  by  their  owner  to  any 
expressman  at  any  point  in  the  United 
States,  Canada,  Mexico,  West  Indies,  or 
the  Sandwich  Islands,  and  by  him  be 
carried  to  the  elastic  factory,  there  to  be 
re-gored  with  new  elastic  and  then  de- 
livered back  to  the  original  shipping 
point,  entirely  without  expense  to  the 
owner  of  the  shoes. 

Under  this  plan,  which  was  guaranteed 
by  a  binding  warranty  running  directly 
to  the  wearer  of  the  shoes,  the  Congress 
shoe  in  the  late  eighties  was  a  safer  pur- 
chase than  any  other  shoe,  for  its  service 
at  the  most  vital  point  was  absolutely 
guaranteed.  Added  to  this  it  was  a 
more  labor-saving  and  time-saving  shoe 
to  put  on  and  off  the  foot,  and  it  had 
advantages  which  appealed  to  the  sensi- 
ble American.  All  other  shoes  had 
radical  and  annoying  defects.  Laces 
broke  and  soiled  the  hands,  buttons 
worked  loose,  refused  to  remain  but- 
toned and  came  off,  but  the  quick- 
working  Congress  shoe   with  its  elastic 

76 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

feature  forever  insured,  was  a  winning 
proposition.  In  three  years  from  the 
starting  of  the  guarantee  plan,  we  had 
secured  a  large  proportion  of  the  men's 
shoe  trade  of  the  country.  I  think  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  a  goodly  percentage  of 
the  shoes  then  worn  by  men  in  the 
United  States  were  Congress  shoes.  The 
notable  exceptions  were  the  brogans  of 
the  Western  farmers,  and  the  few  button 
and  lace  shoes  which  were  worn  by  the 
young  men  in  the  cities  of  the  Atlantic 
seaboard — in  what  we  called  the  "dude 
belt."  Prosperity  was  at  hand,  and 
profits  came  fast. 

But  sometimes  a  cloud  no  bigger  than 
a  man's  hand  (m  this  case,  let  us  say 
no  bigger  than  a  man's  foot)  will  spread 
till  it  obscures  the  whole  heavens,  and 
the  cloud  which  darkened  our  prosperity 
started  in  just  such  a  microscopic  form : 
a  few  more  of  the  Eastern  dudes  began 
wearing  laced  shoes!  And  now  slowly 
the  "dude  belt"  began  to  widen.  At 
first  it  gave  us  no  concern;  after  all. 

77 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

they  were  only  dudes,  freakish  in  their 
taste  and  inconsequent  in  affairs.  But 
the  next  year  the  Atlantic  breezes  were 
blowing  laced  shoes  from  Boston  and 
New  York  into  cities  as  far  west  as 
Albany.  This  was  annoying,  yet  it  was 
not  necessarily  serious.  An  infection 
which  might  be  deadly  to  city  dudes 
surely  would  not  for  a  moment  disturb 
the  "cross-roads"  trade.  The  country 
Reubens  were  immune  to  fashion,  and 
it  was  doubtful  if  even  the  smaller  cities 
would  feel  the  effects  of  the  contagion. 
We  believed  then  that  it  would  desolate 
the  large  Eastern  cities,  but  spare  the 
West,  most  of  the  smaller  Eastern  cities, 
and  all  of  the  towns.  Yet  the  storm 
area  spread  out  as  it  journeyed  westward, 
and,  slowly  retreating  before  it,  we  con- 
tested every  inch  of  ground  as  far  as 
Chicago.  We  had  need  to  fight,  for 
now  we  knew  what  it  was  that  we  were 
fighting — the  most  dangerous  and  un- 
conquerable enemy  that  ever  crosses 
the  path  of  trade,  fashion. 

78 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

The  great  problem  was  to  bring  back 
the  Congress  shoe  into  favor,  and  on 
that  problem  I  went  to  work.  The 
prayers  and  hopes  of  the  whole  elastic 
industry  were  behind  me,  and  my  own 
reputation  was  before  me.  I  never  for 
a  moment  doubted  the  success  of  the 
issue.  I  worked  as  I  never  worked  be- 
fore. Weeks  passed,  yet  with  no  visible 
results  from  my  end.  Months  passed, 
and  I  had  not  been  able  to  originate  one 
new  idea  that  would  pass  muster  before 
my  own  analysis,  not  to  mention  the 
later  necessary  approval  of  my  clients. 
I  had  reached  a  point  now  where  I 
dreamed  nightly  of  Congress  shoes,  but 
there  was  no  respite.  After  two  years 
of  working  without  discovering  any  way 
to  successfully  turn  the  tide  of  Fashion, 
I  felt  that,  so  far  as  I  was  concerned,  the 
struggle  was  hopeless,  and  I  proposed  to 
give  up  my  job.  But  I  was  not  per- 
mitted to  stop.  My  chents  calmly  said: 
"Keep  on!  There  must  be  some  solu- 
tion!    The   Congress   shoe   is   intrinsi- 

79 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

cally  the  best  shoe.  The  American 
people  want  the  best  shoe.  You  have 
only  got  to  reach  their  sober  second 
judgment,  and  you  surely  can  find  some 
way  to  do  this.  We  want  you  not  to 
cease  your  efforts  for  one  day  till  you 
find  some  way  to  bring  the  Congress 
shoe  back  into  popularity.  Remember 
that  the  American  people  are  not 
fools!" 

So  I  worked  on.  It  was  a  tough 
chore,  but  alternating  between  hope  and 
despair,  I  kept  at  the  job.  Another 
year  passed.  The  trade  situation  now 
had  become  very  discouragmg:  one  or 
two  factories  had  been  closed  down; 
a  long  list  of  skilled  workmen  had  dis- 
appeared from  the  pay-rolls;  the  num- 
ber of  Congress  shoes  worn  by  men  had 
dropped  to  a  small  fraction  of  its  former 
figures.  And  now  I  worked  under  the 
goading  of  almost  constant  entreaty  for 
four  more  years!  Things  didn't  get 
much  worse  because  they  couldn't. 
The  president  of  one  of  the  large  com- 

80 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

panics  kept  me  busy  checking  over  his 
prolific  supply  of  ideas  and  reading  the 
literature  with  which  he  swamped  my 
office.  And  then  at  the  end  of  seven 
years  the  light  dawned! 

At  least,  I  thought  it  was  the  dawn, 
and  so  did  all  who  saw  it.  I  lay  no 
claim  here  to  being  the  discoverer  of  the 
remedy,  but  I  gladly  take  the  blame 
for  not  seeing  that  in  our  desperate 
straits  we  were  substituting  invention 
for  imagmation.  In  the  flood  of  litera- 
ture that  I  have  just  mentioned  there 
came  to  my  desk  one  day  a  copy  of  the 
Statistical  Report  of  the  Interstate  Com- 
merce Commission,  and  among  its  records 
there  was  a  mortality  table  of  the  num- 
ber of  persons  killed  and  injured  on  all 
American  railways  in  the  preceding 
year.  My  attention  was  called  to  a 
curious  feature  of  this  table.  While 
6,136  persons  had  been  killed  on  rail- 
roads in  the  United  States  in  that  year, 
the  total  number  of  dead  passengers 
was   only    170.      In    other   words,  the 

81 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

popular  conception  of  the  danger  of 
being  killed  while  riding  as  a  passenger 
on  any  r&ilroad  train  was  grossly  ex- 
aggerated. Railroad  accidents  didn't 
kill  passengers;  they  killed  employes 
and  they  killed  the  outside  public,  but 
rarely  did  they  kill  their  own  passengers. 
In  the  above  death-roll  it  was  only  a 
fraction  over  two  per  cent.!  Yet  507,- 
421,362  passengers  were  carried  by  the 
railroads  that  year,  and  the  total  of  170 
killed  was  approximately  only  one  pas- 
senger in  three  millions.  Hence,  with  a 
very  small  per  cent,  of  American  men 
wearing  Congress  shoes,  and  with  only 
170  out  of  76,000,000  Americans  being 
killed  while  passengers  on  railroad 
trains,  it  was  evident  that  we  could 
afford  to  insure  without  charge  the  life 
of  every  man  who  was  killed  while 
riding  as  a  passenger  on  any  railroad 
in  the  United  States,  provided  he  had 
Congress  shoes  on  his  feet  when  he  was 
killed ! 

This  last  feature  was  important.     He 
82 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

had  got  to  die  in  his  Congress  shoes 
or  he  got  no  insurance  He  might  have 
worn  Congress  shoes  for  six  months 
prior  to  his  death,  but  if  he  happened 
to  leave  them  off  on  the  day  he  was 
killed  he  lost  his  insurance.  If  the 
shoes  were  in  a  travelling-bag  by  his 
side,  he  still  had  no  claim;  he  had 
literally  got  to  die  in  his  Congress  hoots 
or  his  heirs  got  nothing  on  his  policy. 

Now  there  is  an  enormous  amount 
of  workingmen's  life  insurance  which  is 
paid  for  by  the  workingman  in  weekly 
instalments  out  of  his  salary,  and  these 
constant  weekly  payments  are  not 
always  easy  to  meet.  But  here  he 
could  secure  one  form  of  life  insurance 
(limited  to  railroad  accidents)  at  no 
cost  except  that  he  wear  Congress 
shoes.  An  arrangement  was  entered 
into  with  one  of  the  large  insurance 
companies,  and  for  two  years  the  life 
of  every  man  who  wore  Congress  shoes 
was  insured  in  the  way  I  have  in- 
dicated.    But  the   trade   results    were 

83 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

disappointing.  Notwithstanding  the 
great  number  of  travelling  salesmen 
who  need  just  such  insurance,  not- 
withstanding the  large  demand  for  ac- 
cident insurance  tickets  by  the  travel- 
ling public,  we  could  not  bring  back  the 
popularity  of  the  Congress  shoe  in  this 
way.  We  couldn't  play  "Insurance" 
against  "Fashion"  and  win.  We  had 
invented  the  insurance  remedy  and  it 
was  outside  the  issue.     It  failed. 

I  have  gone  at  inexcusable  length 
into  the  details  of  this  illustration  be- 
cause we  can  afford  space  for  only  one 
example,  and  it  is  of  great  importance 
to  keep  clearly  in  mind  where  imagina- 
tion ends  and  invention  begins.  In- 
vention is  rarely  analytical,  penetra- 
tive, or  pertinent.  In  working  out  a 
problem  the  mind  should  not  travel  for 
one  instant  beyond  the  point  where  it 
sees  clearly  the  cause  of  the  trouble. 
Overlook  the  cause  and  treat  only  the 
effect,  and  you  are  inviting  invention 
to  do  the  work  of  imagination. 

84 


IMAGINATION    IN     BUSINESS 

And  now  let  me  speak  of  another 
source  of  similar  danger.  There  is  a 
curious  lack  of  directness  in  the  view 
which  most  men  take  of  their  own  busi- 
ness problems.  They  cannot  easily 
assume  the  attitude  of  a  disinterested 
observer.  Often  the  mere  suggestion 
of  a  new  point  of  view  will  start  the 
mind  at  work  to  some  purpose.  Re- 
cently a  portion  of  this  essay  appeared 
in  a  monthly  magazine,  and  its  publica- 
tion brought  me  many  inquiries  and 
requests  for  assistance  in  solving  busi- 
ness problems.  Without  attempting  to 
study  the  conditions  of  the  different 
cases  (for  which  I  had  no  leisure  at  that 
time),  I  was  often  able  to  ask  a  few 
questions  which  served  to  indicate  the 
line  of  thought  that  the  inquiry  might 
take.  Then  the  analysis  which  must 
precede  a  careful  and  truthful  answer 
to  those  questions  would  bring  the  mind 
to  a  simpler  and  more  direct  point  of 
view. 

Thus,  one  inquiry  was  from  a  retail 
85 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

store  selling  a  standard  line  of  goods 
which  was  practically  duplicated  in 
other  neighboring  stores.  This  retailer 
was  on  a  main  thoroughfare;  his  com- 
petitors were  on  the  same  thorough- 
fare; he  wanted  more  of  the  business; 
how  could  he  get  it  ?  I  asked  him  one 
question:  "What  possible  reason  is 
there  why  persons  should  pass  all  these 
other  stores  and  come  to  your  store  to 
buy?" 

He  thought  a  moment  and  then 
said:  "Then  you  don't  think  I  can  get 
the  business?" 

I  said:  "Quite  the  contrary!  I  think 
you  can  get  a  lot  of  their  business — 
after  you  have  thought  over  that  ques- 
tion and  asked  it  of  yourself  in  one 
form  or  another  a  hundred  times  in 
the  next  six  months." 

He  said:  "It's  a  gloomy  sort  of  ques- 
tion. If  anything  would  discourage  a 
man  from  further  trying  right  at  the 
outset  it  would  be  putting  the  thing 
in  that  form." 

86 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

I  said:  "That's  just  where  you're 
on  the  wrong  track.  That  question 
has  got  to  be  asked  and  answered 
before  you  will  see  this  new  business. 
Here  are  five  stores,  fairly  close  to  each 
other,  all  selling  the  same  merchandise. 
You  are  only  entitled  to  one-fifth  of  the 
total  trade.  For  every  dollar  above 
that  amount  which  comes  to  you  there 
must  be  a  reason.  You've  got  to  create 
that  reason.  If  the  trade  comes  and 
you  don't  know  the  reason,  it's  worth 
your  while  to  discover  it.  Some  cus- 
tomers travel  on  the  line  of  least  re- 
sistance ;  you  must  make  the  line  of  least 
resistance  lead  directly  to  your  store. 
All  customers  are  influenced  more  or 
less  by  one  or  another  of  a  dozen  dif- 
ferent considerations;  you  must  weigh 
every  one  of  those  considerations  and 
recognize  its  existence.  Again  and  again 
you  must  ask  yourself,  'Why  in  the 
world  should  these  people  pass  four 
other  stores  and  come  bang  into  this 
one  ?     There  has  got  to  be  a  reason  for 

87 


IMAGINATION     IN    BUSINESS 

it.'  Now  I  believe  that  the  mere  asking 
of  this  question  constantly — provided 
it  is  always  followed  by  a  well-consider- 
ed, serious  answer,  coming  after  ten  or 
fifteen  minutes  of  reflection  and  study — 
the  mere  question  and  answer,  I  say,  for- 
ever and  forever  repeated  in  one  form  or 
another,  is  bound  to  bear  fruit.  If  you 
doubt  it,  just  try  it  for  three  months." 

So  ended  the  time  I  could  give  to  his 
problem.  The  question  I  proposed  to 
him  was  only  a  sign-post,  nothing  more. 
I  wonder  whether  he  is  going  ahead  on 
the  road  on  which  I  tried  to  start  him 
or  whether  he  is  still  merely  staring  at 
the  sign-post. 

I  received  some  inquiries  from  educa- 
tional institutions  wanting  additional 
pupils.  One  was  a  State  college,  two 
were  large  academies,  one  was  a  kinder- 
garten. To  one  of  these  1  wrote,  sug- 
gestmg  that  the  point  of  view  indicated 
by  the  following  questions  might  be 
taken  as  a  startmg-point : 

ist.  You  want  new  pupils.  Where 
88 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

are  those  pupils  at  present?  Who  has 
them? 

2d.  Who  decides  the  selection  of  the 
school  they  shall  attend  ? 

3d.  What  consideration  most  in- 
fluences the  decision? 

4th.  What  are  you  doing  to  warrant 
the  belief  in  the  minds  of  No.  2  that 
your  school  is  superior  along  the  lines 
indicated  by  No.  3  ? 

This  points  the  way  along  which  the 
work  may  begin.  But  these  questions 
remind  me  of  a  fatal  error  into  which 
many  business  men  fall.  They  are  not 
frank  with  themselves!  There  is  an  old 
adage  that  there  are  three  persons  to 
whom  you  should  always  tell  the  whole 
miserable  truth — your  lawyer,  your  phy- 
sician, and  yourself.  Now  there  is  one 
question  that  I  often  want  to  ask  a  client, 
but  am  sometimes  prevented  from  ask- 
ing— "How  much  humbug  is  there  in 
this?"  In  other  words,  if  all  the  facts 
about  your  business,  your  goods,  the 
service  rendered,  and  the  values  given 

89 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

were  known  to  a  buyer,  and  he  also 
had  the  same  information  about  your 
competitors,  would  his  trade  come  to 
you?  Half  the  men  to  whom  you  ask 
this  question  will  answer  "Yes."  Some 
do  so  from  ignorance,  and  some  from 
insincerity.  In  either  case  it  is  a  blun- 
der. Because  the  method  to  be  pur- 
sued if  you  are  humbugging  is  not  the 
method  to  be  followed  if  your  preten- 
sions are  absolute  facts.  Bill  Nye  used 
to  tell  the  story  of  a  man  who  once 
charged  him  a  dollar  for  a  sandwich. 
Nye  thought  he  detected  in  this  some 
new  business  boom  or  unique  condition, 
and  taking  the  man  aside  confidentially 
he  offered  him  fifty  cents  to  tell  him 
truthfully  why  he  asked  this  price.  The 
man  said:  "Well,  I  don't  mind  telling 
you  in  confidence.  The  fact  is,  I  need 
the  money." 

I  often  want  to  ask  a  client,  after  he 
has  told  me  his  story:  "Are  you  really 
such  a  benefactor  to  humanity  or  do 
you  merely  need  the  money?" 

90 


VII 

THE  most  interesting  because  the 
most  difficult  problems  came  usu- 
ally from  the  manufacturer;  the  simplest 
came  from  the  retailer,  and  yet  he  was 
always  the  most  persistent  and  urgent 
in  his  appeals  for  help.  He  seemed  to 
live  closer  to  his  business.  A  retailer's 
problem  may  usually  be  divided  into 
two  parts:  first,  to  get  people  inside 
the  store;  secondly,  to  make  them 
purchase.  As  a  rule,  the  first  was  the 
work  I  was  called  on  to  do,  because 
nearly  every  retailer  had  an  unflinching 
conviction  that  if  I  would  deliver  the 
man  or  woman  inside  his  door,  he  could 
guarantee  the  sale.  So  we  often  divided 
our  labors  on  the  line  of  the  threshold, 
and  when  the  store  was  filled  I  could  sit 

91 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

back  and  let  his  salesmanship  do  the 
work. 

And  yet  salesmanship  is  very  far 
from  dispensing  with  the  use  of  the 
imagination,  for  the  essence  of  success- 
ful advertising  to-day  is  merely  sublime 
salesmanship.  If  you  advertise  an  ar- 
ticle it  ought  to  be  so  vividly  and  tempt- 
ingly described  that  the  purchaser  is  not 
satisfied  to  take  one  at  random  from 
the  stock  on  hand,  but  insists  upon 
having  the  identical  one  that  you  have 
been  using  as  your  sample  in  the 
demonstration.  Here,  then,  is  your  guide 
to  one  factor  in  good  advertising — in- 
vest the  article  with  strong,  intense  in- 
dividuaHty.  Make  it  alive  on  the  print- 
ed page.  Hang  up  your  suit  of  clothes 
in  the  newspaper  so  that  the  customer 
not  merely  reads  about  it,  but  actually 
sees  it  and  feels  it.  Describe  it  so  that 
it  shall  stand  out  as  distinct  from  every 
other  suit  as  you  yourself  stand  out 
distinct  from  other  men.  Yet  give  it 
the   individuality    that   is    true   to   its 

92 


IMAGINATION     IN    BUSINESS 

character,  and  not  merely  a  random  indi- 
viduality that  shall  serve  to  sell  it.  In 
other  words,  let  your  individuality  be  in 
traits,  qualities,  and  characteristics,  not 
in  wordc,  phrases,  and  forms  of  speech. 
I  hope  it  is  not  necessary  to  point  out 
the  imperative  need  of  truth  in  the  letter 
and  detail;  we  shall  never  get  truth  in 
the  spirit,  I  fear,  till  all  men's  mental 
processes  move  on  parallel  lines.  Imag- 
ination will  run  riot  in  the  spirit  of  a 
description,  but  don't  let  it  color  a 
single  concrete  figure  of  measurement. 
I  believe  it  is  easily  possible  to  take  a 
kitchen  chair  and  describe  it  in  such  an 
imaginative  spirit  that  the  average 
reader  would  insist  on  buying  it  forth- 
with, and  further  insist  on  that  par- 
ticular chair  rather  than  a  duplicate 
from  stock.  Here  the  letter  and  detail 
of  the  description  would  be  technically 
correct,  so  that  you  could  not  assail  the 
positive  accuracy  of  a  single  statement, 
but  the  relative  accuracy  would  be 
wholly  wrong,  the  spirit  of  the  descrip- 

93 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

tion  would  be  false,  because  the  direction 
of  the  emphasis,  the  multiplicity  of  the 
detail,  and  the  over-insistence  upon  the 
concrete  (which  comes  from  the  attempt 
to  give  it  individuality)  would  all  be 
shockingly  out  of  their  true  proportion. 
I  recall  a  case  in  my  first  year  of 
business.  I  was  advertising  a  piece  of 
furniture  which  might  be  described  as  a 
secretary-cabinet-bookcase  —  a  sort  of 
combination  of  three  articles  in  one.  As 
the  result  of  a  single  insertion  in  the 
morning  papers  of  the  city,  over  forty 
persons  came  to  the  store  of  the  adver- 
tiser in  the  next  four  days  and  asked 
to  see  that  combination  piece.  Not 
one  of  those  persons  purchased  it!  Some 
bought  other  articles;  some  bought  noth- 
ing. Most  of  them  were  disappointed; 
a  few  complained  that  the  piece  did 
not  come  up  to  the  description.  Prob- 
ably they  all  felt  this  inadequacy, 
whether  they  said  so  or  not.  Yet  not 
one  of  these  persons  could  point  to  a 
technical   inaccuracy    or    misstatement 

94 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

in  the  description.  When  the  sym- 
pathetic salesman  regretted  that  any 
error  had  crept  into  their  advertise- 
ment and  begged  to  have  it  pointed  out, 
lo!  there  was  no  error.  Every  specific 
statement  was  aggressively  true.  But  by 
over-insistence  on  unimportant  trifles, 
by  misdirection  of  just  emphasis,  and  by 
exaggerated  adherence  to  the  concrete, 
the  whole  thing  was  as  false  as  it  well 
could  be.  The  advertiser  himself  was 
satisfied,  for  people  had  been  brought 
into  the  store,  goods  had  been  sold,  and 
no  one  had  departed  with  a  grievance. 
I  was  satisfied  because  I  was  green  at 
advertising  and  didn't  know  any  better. 
Yet  we  were  both  perplexed,  and  at  the 
best  it  was  a  victory  of  Pyrrhus.  Fort- 
unately, no  harm  came  to  either  of  us, 
for  we  both  took  the  lesson  to  heart.  I 
wrote  many  advertisements  for  that 
house  in  the  next  nineteen  years,  but 
the  whip  of  the  Scythians  never  de- 
scended on  either  of  us  again.  I  had 
learned  a  lesson. 

95 


VIII 

I  HAD  some  unique  problems  presented 
to  me  in  the  twenty  years  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  but  I  found  them  all  gov- 
erned by  the  same  laws  and  solvable 
by  the  same  processes.  On  one  oc- 
casion a  committee  from  a  city  in  one 
of  the  Middle  States  applied  to  me 
for  some  method  by  which  they  could 
make  a  graveyard  fashionable.  They 
had  purchased  a  large  tract  of  land  and 
improved  it  at  considerable  cost.  Now 
at  last  they  had  a  really  beautiful  cem- 
etery. But  they  could  not  get  inmates 
for  it.  To  use  their  own  words,  they 
could  not  "make  it  popular."  "Peo- 
ple don't  seem  to  want  to  be  buried 
there!"  said  one  of  them.  Would  I 
kindly   tell    them    how    to    get    people 

96 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

buried  there?  It  was  a  serious  situa- 
tion for  them,  with  all  their  money  in- 
vested. I  doubt  if  they  saw  any  humor 
in  their  request. 

Once  a  politician  who  was  running 
for  governor  of  Massachusetts  came  to 
me.  He  wanted  in  some  way  to  get  a 
grip  on  the  voters  of  the  State.  I  wish 
I  could  tell  you  what  I  did  in  his  case, 
but  perhaps  it  is  hardly  fair,  for  it 
might  lead  to  his  identification.  He 
was  a  man  of  large  ammunition  and 
small  bore,  and  when  the  smoke  of 
election  had  cleared  away,  there  was 
no  dent  in  his  bull's-eye.  I  think  any 
one  might  have  stood  as  a  target  before 
his  blundering  aim  with  perfect  safety. 

At  another  time  I  was  retained  by  a 
somewhat  erratic  man  (the  head  of  a 
large  industry  and  a  well-known  figure 
in  the  commercial  world,  a  man  of 
powerful  and  interesting  personality) 
to  name  his  children.  He  paid  me 
liberally  for  my  efforts,  and  I  devoted 
many   hours  to  the  work.     Their  ages 

97 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

ranged  from  two  to  twelve  years,  and 
they  were  of  both  sexes.  I  compound- 
ed names  which  represented  the  various 
attributes  that  he  especially  desired 
them  to  acquire.  Thus  the  oldest  boy 
was  to  bear  a  name  that  implied  two 
qualities — service  to  humanity  and  the 
spirit  that  triumphs  over  all  obstacles. 
The  oldest  girl  was  to  be  given  a  name 
that  suggested  the  ministering  angel  in 
sickness,  and  the  sympathetic,  devoted 
companion  in  all  the  experiences  of  life. 
At  the  time  I  thought  the  whole  idea 
was  very  bizarre,  but  I  have  come  to 
feel  differently  about  it,  and  I  believe 
the  man  was  not  so  erratic,  after  all. 
I  am  not  ashamed  of  those  names,  I  only 
wish  I  had  one  of  them  myself;  and  now 
that  the  children  have  grown  to  man- 
hood and  womanhood,  I  hope  they  have 
forgiven  me  and  that  they  are  living  up 
to  them  as  well  as  they  can. 

Sometimes  cases  came  from  profes- 
sions where  an  unwritten  etiquette  for- 
bade the  least  outward  effort  at  business 

98 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

extension.  Tradition  had  sternly  es- 
tablished that  the  business  should  seek 
the  man,  not  the  man  seek  the  business. 
So  the  business  was  sought  by  stealth. 
On  three  occasions  I  recall  that  authors 
came  to  ask  for  some  method  by  which 
their  books  could  be  more  successfully 
sold  or  their  publisher  aroused  to  ad- 
vertise them  more  vigorously.  I  feel 
for  those  authors,  now  that  I  have  a 
publisher.  Sometimes  a  physician  came. 
He  wanted  patients,  but  naturally  it  was 
unprofessional  to  do  any  one  of  the 
dozen  things  that  would  bring  patients. 
I  recommended  to  one  ambitious  phy- 
sician to  have  a  strictly  unlettered  and 
unadvertised  private  office  in  the  down- 
town business  section,  and  be  there  for 
an  hour  daily  about  noon.  But  he 
could  not  bring  himself  to  do  a  thing  so 
unprofessional.  I  suggested  that  he 
get  some  confrere  to  join  him,  so  that 
each  might  make  the  other  respectable. 
Still  he  hesitated.  I  know  now  that  my 
advice  was  bad.     He  was  right  in  re- 

99 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS  • 

fusing  it,  and  his  great  eventual  success 
justified  his  waiting. 

In  looking  over  the  records  of  my  first 
years  in  this  work,  I  find  a  case  which 
had  some  unique  features.  A  large 
banking  house  in  New  York  wanted 
"advice  or  assistance";  as  they  ex- 
pressed it,  "something  which  we  are 
told  you  do."  They  refused  to  state  the 
nature  of  the  problem  till  I  had  named 
a  price  for  my  aid.  This  was  "buying  a 
pig  in  a  poke,"  and  had  it  been  an 
ordinary  client  I  would  have  refused. 
But  the  reputation  of  the  house  was  un- 
questioned, and  I  named  a  price  w^hich 
allowed  me  a  liberal  factor  of  safety. 
Then  they  wrote  substantially  as  follows : 

"We  want  more  deposits.  Specific- 
ally, we  want  the  accounts  of  interior 
banks.  It  must  not  be  known  that  we 
want  this  business,  or  we  never  can  get 
it.  The  slightest  effort  to  obtain  it — 
in  fact,  almost  any  solicitation  of  it — 
would  imply  that  we  are  not  the  proper 

lOO 


IMAGINATION    IN    B-O'SINESS  >'> 

■     >       : 
i  ,  * 

persons  to  receive  it.  It  is  the  old, 
dignified  conservative,  who  does  not 
seem  to  care  for  added  deposits,  who  gets 
them;  the  active,  pushing  house  is  apt 
to  be  viewed  with  suspicion.  Now, 
conditioned  on  the  fact  that  we  cannot 
ask  for  this  business  and  will  not  permit 
it  to  be  known  that  we  want  it,  will  you 
tell  us  how  we  can  secure  it?" 

Here  was  an  interesting  problem,  and 
one  that  I  keenly  enjoyed.  Remember 
that  this  occurred  in  the  early  eighties, 
when  banks  and  trust  companies  held  a 
very  different  view  of  the  wisdom  of 
publicity  from  what  is  popularly  enter- 
tained to-day.  We  got  that  business — 
over  twice  as  much  as  they  had  hoped  to 
secure.  It  took  about  five  months  to  do  it, 
and  the  letter  of  congratulation  which  the 
house  sent  me  when  it  was  all  over  would 
have  been  worth  a  great  deal  if  I  could 
have  used  it  without  violating  confidence. 

But  I  am  rambling  ofi  into  reminis- 
cence without  any  objective  point, 

lOI 


. '  '  . ,  > 


t  t      4        t        t 


"■  '<',''  \' :'.  t'  ' 


IX 


IN  a  more  comprehensive  study  of  the 
subject,  it  would  be  interesting  to 
enumerate  and  try  to  classify  the  great 
variety  of  problems  which  arise  in  busi- 
ness. To  every  one  of  these  problems, 
imagination,  if  you  employ  it,  will  open 
the  door.  If  you  want  some  day  to 
relieve  the  tedium  of  a  railroad  journey 
by  employing  your  imagination  upon  a 
test  problem,  let  me  give  you  one.  It 
was  the  first  client  I  ever  had.  Two 
young  men  in  Indiana  conceived  the 
idea  that  there  would  be  a  fortune  for 
them  if  they  could  secure  a  whale,  load 
him  on  a  large  special  car,  and  carry  him 
over  the  United  States,  giving  exhibi- 
tions in  every  town  and  city  through 

I02 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

which  they  passed,  where  their  car  could 
be  side-tracked  for  one  day,  while  the 
great  fresh-water  public  saw  the  whale 
at  twenty-five  cents  a  head. 

They  investigated  the  idea  thorough- 
ly, found  it  practical,  and  put  into  the 
venture  every  last  cent  that  both  of 
them  had  saved.  They  had  two  elab- 
orate cars  constructed  in  the  Pullman 
shops.  They  were  built  on  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad  pattern;  one  was  a  car 
of  extra  length,  with  special  appliances 
for  switching,  curves,  etc.,  and  was  to 
hold  the  whale.  The  sides  of  this  car 
let  down,  and  served  as  an  inclined 
platform  upon  which  people  could  walk 
up  and  view  the  "monster  of  the  deep." 
The  other  car  was  a  hotel  car,  and  con- 
tained bedrooms  and  Hving-rooms,  ac- 
commodations for  their  families,  busi- 
ness office,  ticket-office,  safe,  etc.  They 
were  really  fine  cars,  costing  many  thou- 
sands of  dollars.  They  even  went  so  far 
as  to  have  all  their  printing  prepared, 
giving  a  thrilling  account  of  the  capture 

103 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

of  the  whale,  and  every  detail,  discreetly 
omitting  the  mention  of  its  exact  size. 
Thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  post- 
ers, flyers,  and  circulars  were  printed, 
and  then  the  two  cars  started  from  the 
Pullman  works  in  the  West,  bound  for 
Boston.  They  arrived  in  the  Boston  & 
Albany  yards,  where  they  were  side- 
tracked while  the  two  men  went  down 
to  Nantucket  to  arrange  for  the  purchase 
of  the  whale. 

There  is  a  recognized  industry  on  the 
Atlantic  coast  in  whales.  The  year  be- 
fore these  young  men  arrived  in  Boston 
over  forty  whales  had  been  caught  and 
brought  in  to  Nantucket.  Any  one  capt- 
uring a  whale,  dead  or  alive,  was  en- 
abled to  dispose  of  it  to  an  enterprising 
buyer  in  Nantucket,  who  stood  always 
ready  to  purchase.  These  young  men 
found,  however,  upon  arriving  at  Nan- 
tucket, that  no  whale  had  been  captured 
since  they  refused  the  last  one,  which 
had  been  landed  in  July — ten  weeks 
too  early  for  their  purposes.     Usually 

104 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

the  catch  extends  well  into  November, 
and  they  had  counted  upon  the  cold 
weather  to  help  them  in  the  first  stages 
of  their  undertaking.  But  that  year 
only  fourteen  whales  had  been  caught, 
and  although  they  waited  in  Nantucket 
until  the  season  closed,  no  more  whales 
appeared. 

Without  a  cent  of  money,  with  their 
families  on  their  hands,  and  with  total 
assets  amounting  to  two  elaborate  cars, 
the  problem  is  to  carry  these  young 
men  through  one  year,  making  them 
earn  enough  to  provide  for  all  their 
necessities  of  life,  including  car-storage, 
and  equip  them  in  the  fall  of  the  follow- 
ing year  with  a  large  whale.  That 
problem  was  solved;  those  two  young 
men  were  kept  alive,  and  their  families 
supported,  and  one  year  later  I  saw  the 
tail  of  a  forty-five  foot  whale  vanishing 
over  the  railroad  tracks  westward, 
where  it  eventually  gladdened  the  hearts 
of  thousands  of  wild  and  woolly  Western- 
ers at  twenty-five  cents  a  peep.     I  will 

105 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

not  weary  you  now  with  an  account  of 
how  it  was  done,  but  I  recommend  it 
as  a  pleasant  little  exercise  for  the 
imagination. 


AND  now,  shall  we  not  all  agree  that 
L  there  is  a  faculty  which  can  accom- 
plish in  business  such  remedial  and 
constructive  work  as  we  have  been  con- 
sidering ?  It  is  not  enterprise,  nor  thrift, 
nor  industry,  nor  sagacity,  nor  courage. 
Nor  can  all  these  qualities  combined 
supply  the  place  left  vacant  by  the  lack 
of  imagination.  They  each  have  their 
value,  and  by  any  of  these  roads  a  man 
may  win  to  success.  But  the  faculty 
of  which   I   now  conceive   makes   him 

CAPABLE  OF  UNDERTAKING  ANY  BUSI- 
NESS! He  may  be  a  successful  boot- 
black, or  the  able  president  of  a  bank, 
or  the  astute  manager  of  a  circus.  He 
may  fail,  for  the  imagination  which 
enables    him    to    comprehend    human 

107 


IMAGINATION    IN    BUSINESS 

nature  in  the  aggregate  does  not  neces- 
sarily enable  him  to  understand  it  in  the 
individual.  He  may  know  human  nat- 
ure, but  not  individual  nature.  Hence, 
he  may  be  a  judge  of  methods  but  not 
of  men. 

Finally,  is  any  apology  needed  for 
these  illustrations?  To  some  readers, 
perhaps,  they  may  seern  sharp  and 
shrewd,  with  a  little  flavor  of  the  pave- 
ment. But  business  is  ii^llectual  war- 
fare, a  battle  of  wits-/-in  which  one 
does  not  repulse  solid  j^ot  with  blank 
cartridges.  It  is  notia  theory,  but  a 
condition,  which  conffonts  the  business 
man.  He  takes  his  ipedicine  as  he  finds 
it  compounded.  It  doesn't  taste  as  he 
would  like  to  have  it,  but  no  one  asked 
him  what  he  liked.  He  isn't  picnick- 
ing. He's  at  war.  He  smiles  through 
the  bitter  drink,  and  orders  it  up  for  the 
whole  company  when  his  turn  comes! 


I 


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